






Coast Guard Publication 1 


U.S. Coast Guard: 
America’s Maritime Guardian 



1 January 2002 







Coast Guard Publication 1 


U.S. Coast Guard; 
America’s Maritime Guardian 



1 January 2002 




. U 1^63 




\ \ 



A few armed vessels, judiciously stationed at the entrances of our ports, might at a 
small expense be made useful sentinels of the laws. 

— Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury 
Federalist No. 12, The Utility of the Union in Respect to Revenue 

From the New York Packet 
27 November 1787 

Earliest recorded reference to what would become the U.S. Coast Guard 


It had the desired effect. 


— Captain John Faunce, USRCS 
Commanding Officer, USRC Harriet Lane 
Comment to Harper’s Weekly about firing the 
first naval shot of the Civil War in Charleston, South Carolina 


Did they get off? 


— Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. Signalman First Class Douglas Munro, USCG 

Inquiring of the 400 Marines he rescued. Just before 
dying of wounds he suffered in the effort 


These poor, plain men, dwellers upon the lonely sands of Hatteras, took their lives 
in their hands, and, at the most imminent risk, crossed the most tumultuous sea ... 
and all for what? That others might live to see home and friends. 

— Annual Report of the U.S. Life-Saving Service, 1885 


The lighthouse and the lightship appeal to the interests and better instinct of man 
because they are symbolic of never-ceasing watchfulness, of steadfast endurance 
in every exposure, of widespread helpfulness. 

— George R. Putnam, the first Commissioner of Lighthouses 

U.S. Lighthouse Service, 1906-1935 


Having fought as a part of the Navy in all our wars, and taking an especial pride 
in being fully prepared to perform credible service in the Navy whenever called 
upon, the officers and men of the Coast Guard are inspired not only by the high 
traditions and fine history of their own service, but also by the splendid traditions, 
history, and indoctrination of the United States Navy. They have thus two rich 
heritages to be proud of and two standards of the same lofty character to live up to. 

— Rear Admiral F. C. Billard, USCG 
Commandant of the Coast Guard, 1924-1932 
U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, May 1929 



Table of Contents 


Foreword .1 

Introduction .2 

Chapter One: America’s Maritime Guardian .5 

COAST GUARD ROLES AND MISSIONS .6 

Maritime Security .6 

Maritime Safety.8 

Protection of Natural Resources .10 

Maritime Mobility .11 

National Defense.12 

Chapter l\vo: An Evolving Coast Guard . 15 

1790 TO 1865: REVENUE PROTECTION AND MORE .15 

Revenue Cutters for National Defense.16 

Supporting Maritime Trade .18 

Law Enforcement in a Restive Nation.18 

Revenue Cutters in the War Between the States.19 

1865 TO 1915: THE ROAD TO THE COAST GUARD .20 

Sumner Kimball and Service Reform .20 

Growing Civil Duties.21 

Spanish-American War.22 

1915 TO 1916: ESTABLISHMENT OF THE U.S. COAST GUARD.23 

1917 TO 1945: A SERVICE FORGED BY WAR, CRISIS, 

AND CONSOLIDATION .25 

The Coast Guard in the Great War.25 

Interdiction and Build-Up .26 

The Waesche Consolidation.27 

National Defense to the Fore.28 

1946 TO 1972: SORTING OUT ROLES AND MISSIONS.30 

An International Role in Peacetime and in War.31 

Expanding Civil Responsibilities .33 

Finding a New Home.33 

1973 TO TODAY AND BEYOND: A UNIQUE INSTRUMENT 

OF NATIONAL SECURITY.34 

ECHOES FROM THE PAST .36 





































Chapter Three: The Nature of Our Service 



37 

CORE VALUES.37 

A MILITARY, MULTI-MISSION, MARITIME SERVICE.38 

Military.38 

Multi-Mission .42 

Maritime .43 

A HUMANITARIAN REPUTATION .43 

A UNIQUE SERVICE.47 

Chapter Four: Principles of Coast Guard Operations .49 

THE PRINCIPLE OF CLEAR OBJECTIVE .49 

THE PRINCIPLE OF EFFECTIVE PRESENCE.50 

THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY OF EFFORT .51 

THE PRINCIPLE OF ON-SCENE INITIATIVE.52 

THE PRINCIPLE OF FLEXIBILITY.54 

THE PRINCIPLE OF MANAGED RISK .55 

THE PRINCIPLE OF RESTRAINT .57 

CONCLUSION .57 

Appendices .59 

APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY .60 

APPENDIX B: THE PRINCIPLES OF WAR.64 

APPENDIX C: THE PRINCIPLES OF MILITARY OPERATIONS 

OTHER THAN WAR.66 

APPENDIX D: FURTHER READING.69 

ENDNOTES.72 


V 


A 






























Foreword 

From the Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard 

I am pleased to present America’s Maritime Guardian: U.S. Coast Guard Publication 1 
to the military and civilian men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard 
Reserve, and the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. 

The subtitle, U.S. Coast Guard Publication 1, deserves some explanation. Published 
211 years after the founding of our Service, Publication 1 is clearly not the Coast Guard’s 
first publication, but it is the first official publication to synthesize who we are, what we 
do, and how we do things. 

Why is Publication 1 necessary? Every organization worth its salt has a “handbook” to 
tell its members and anyone else who is interested just what the organization is all about: 
its history, its ethos, its values, and its reason for existence. 

The Coast Guard is a military, multi-mission, maritime service. Though we are 
America’s smallest armed service, we perform an astonishingly broad range of services to 
our country—so broad that it is possible to devote a fulfilling career to one or even several 
major mission areas without understanding how the whole Service works together for our 
nation’s benefit. Publication 1 attempts to supply that understanding. It is designed to let 
the right hand know what the left is doing and to remind both hands of the magnificent 
body to which they are joined. This is our common understanding about ourselves. My 
hope is that it will enable every Coast Guard service member, civilian employee, and 
volunteer to serve more effectively. 



A 


I 











Introduction 


In 1790, the First Congress of the United States established a small 
maritime law enforcement agency to assist in collecting the new nation’s 
customs duties. For the next eight years, this Revenue Marine (later called 
the Revenue Cutter Service) was the nation’s only naval force and so was 
soon assigned military duties. Over time, the Revenue Cutter Service 
acquired new responsibilities and either merged with or absorbed several 
other federal agencies. The Service acquired new responsibilities based 
upon its ability to perform them with existing assets and minimal disrup¬ 
tion to its other duties. It acquired other agencies because their maritime 
responsibilities were seen as intersecting with or complementing its own. 
The result is today’s U.S. Coast Guard—a unique force that carries out an 
array of civil and military responsibilities touching on almost every facet 
of the maritime environment affecting the United States. 

What makes the Coast Guard unique is that in executing our diverse 
missions as America’s Maritime Guardian, we harmonize what seem 
to be contradictory mandates. We are charged at once to be policemen and 
sailors, warriors, humanitarians, regulators, stewards of the environment, 
diplomats, and guardians of the coast. Thus, we are military, multi-mission, 
and maritime. 

As a'^practical matter, while Coast Guard men and women and the units 
in which they serve are prepared to act across the entire range of Coast 
Guard missions, some responsibilities will absorb more time, effort, and 
resources than others. A practical emphasis on specific mission areas 
should not, however, cause us to lose focus on the broad roles of the Coast 
Guard and the way in which these roles affect how the Service is organized, 
equipped, and conducts operations. Indeed, it is the multi-mission nature 
of the Coast Guard that is our greatest strength. Every Coast Guard member 
needs to understand our Service as a whole. This document is designed to 
provide context for that understanding. 





Publication 1 explains what we do\ that is, it describes the fundamental 
roles today’s Coast Guard fulfills in support of the U.S. National Security 
Strategy and the missions we perform in pursuing those roles. It traces our 
organizational history, to explain how the Coast Guard acquired its diverse 
mission set. It explains the unique characteristics and qualities, derived 
from our history, roles, and missions, that together define who we are. 
Finally, it lays out principles of operations that flow from our unique organi¬ 
zational nature and identity. In other words, it also describes how we do 
things. 

The principles of operations discussed in this publication are Coast 
Guard doctrine; that is, fundamental principles that guide our actions in 
support of the nation’s objectives. They are rooted in our history and are 
the distillation of hard-won experience. They provide a shared interpretation 
of that experience. This in turn provides a common starting point for thinking 
about future action. With training and experience, this shared outlook leads 
to consistent behavior, mutual confidence, and more effective collective 
action, without constraining initiative. 

Because this doctrine is rooted in history, it is enduring. But it also 
evolves in response to changes in the political and strategic landscape, 
lessons learned from operations, and the introduction of new technologies. 
Doctrine influences the way in which policy and plans are developed, forces 
are organized and trained, and equipment is procured. It promotes unity 
of purpose, guides professional judgment, and enables Coast Guard men 
and women to best fulfill their responsibilities. Publication 1 tells us how we 
became and why we are America’s Maritime Guardian. 











Chapter One 


Chapter One: America’s Maritime Guardian 


America’s enduring maritime inter¬ 
ests—its reliance on the seas for com¬ 
merce, sustenance, and defense—have 
been constant since colonial days. The 
U.S. Coast Guard exists to address these 
enduring interests. The United States is a 
maritime nation, with an extensive set of 
interests and concerns in the seas 
around us and beyond. With 95,000 
miles of shoreline bordering nearly 3.4 
million square miles of Exclusive 
Economic Zones (EEZ), America’s future 
will remain tied to the sea. The seas link 
the nation with world commerce and 
trade and allow us to project military 
power far from our shores to protect 
important U.S. interests, as well as to 
assist allies and friends at risk from 
common foes. The seas also serve as 
highways for a host of transnational 
threats and challenges that honor no 
national frontier. 



The U.S. Coast Guard is one of the 
five armed services of the United States 
of America. As such, it is an important ele¬ 
ment of America’s national security strategy. 
We protect vital interests of the United 
States—the personal safety and security of 
our population; our natural and economic 
resources; and the territorial integrity of our 
nation—from both internal and external 
threats, natural and man-made. We protect 
these interests in America’s ports and inland 

Coast Guard Roles 

♦ Maritime Security 

♦ Maritime Safety 

♦ Protection of Natural Resources 

♦ Maritime Mobility 

♦ National Defense 


U.S. territorial seas and Exclusive Economic Zones. 


5 



















Chapter One 


waterways, along the coasts, on interna¬ 
tional waters, or in any other maritime 
region where U.S. interests may be at risk. 
From 1915, when the Coast Guard was 
established by law as an armed service, we 
have been a military, multi-mission, mar¬ 
itime service possessing a unique blend 
of humanitarian, law enforcement, regula¬ 
tory, diplomatic, and military capabilities. 
These gird our five fundamental roles: 
maritime security, maritime safety, pro¬ 
tection of natural resources, maritime 
mobility, and national defense. 

Each Coast Guard role is composed of 
several mission areas. Each of these in 
turn is based on one or more mandated 
or authorized duties. Many Coast Guard 
missions benefit more than one role. Eor 
example, while our aids to navigation 
mission primarily supports our maritime 
mobility role by facilitating the movement 
of people and goods, the system of aids we 
maintain also supports our maritime safety 
and protection of natural resources roles 
by preventing accidents. This interwoven, 
overlapping combination of roles and 
missions calls for Coast Guard resources 
that are similarly multi-mission capable. 

COAST GUARD ROLES AND 
MISSIONS 

Maritime Security 

Maritime law enforcement and border 
control are the oldest of the Coast Guard’s 
numerous responsibilities, dating back to 
our founding as the Revenue Marine in 
1790. Congress established the Revenue 
Marine specifically to patrol the coasts and 
seaports to frustrate smuggling and enforce 
the customs laws of the fledgling Republic. 


Two centuries have passed and that early 
challenge has evolved into a full open 
ocean responsibility for the maritime sover¬ 
eignty of our nation. Our maritime law 
enforcement role and the task of interdicting 
ships at sea provide the foundation upon 
which our much broader and complex 
present-day mission set has been built. 

As the nation’s primary maritime law 
enforcement service, the Coast Guard 
enforces or assists in enforcing federal 
laws, treaties, and other international 
agreements on the high seas and waters 
under U.S. jurisdiction. We possess the 
authority to board any vessel subject to 
U.S. jurisdiction to make inspections, 
searches, inquiries, and arrests. We wield 
this extraordinarily broad police power 
with prudence and restraint primarily to 
suppress violations of our drug, immigra¬ 
tion, fisheries, and environmental laws. 

As the designated lead agency for 
maritime drug interdiction under the 
National Drug Control Strategy and the 
co-lead agency with the U.S. Customs 
Service for air interdiction operations, the 
Coast Guard defends America’s seaward 
frontier against a virtual torrent of illegal 
drugs. For more than two decades our 
cutters and aircraft, forward deployed off 


Maritime Security Missions 

♦ Drug Interdiction 

♦ Alien Migrant Interdiction 

♦ EEZ & Living Marine Resource Law/Treaty 
Enforcement 

♦ General Maritime Law Enforcement 










Chapter One 


South America and in the transit zone, have 
intercepted many tons of cocaine, marijuana, 
and other illegal drugs that otherwise 
would have found their way to America’s 
streets. 

Coast Guard alien migrant interdiction 
operations (AMIO) are also law enforcement 
missions with a significant humanitarian 
dimension. Migrants typically take great 
risks and endure significant hardships in 
their attempts to flee their countries and 
enter the United States. In many cases, 
migrant vessels interdicted at sea are over¬ 
loaded and unseaworthy, lack basic safety 
equipment, and are operated by inexperi¬ 
enced mariners. The majority of alien 
migrant interdiction cases we handle 
actually begin as search and rescue cases, 
once again illustrating the interwoven 
nature of our roles and missions. Between 
1980 and 2000, we interdicted 290,000 



Coast Guard members unload bales of marijuana after a bust. 


migrants, mostly from Cuba, Dominican 
Republic, People’s Republic of China, and 
Haiti. 



A boarding team from the medium-endurance cutter Courageous (WMEC 622) prepares to board a vessel 
carrying Haitian migrants. 


A 


7 






















Chapter One 


In 1976, Congress passed what is now 
known as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery 
Conservation and Management Act. By 
creating an Exclusive Economic Zone, this 
act pushed out our nation’s maritime 
border to 200 nautical miles. In the years 
that followed, international fisheries agree¬ 
ments went even further, extending U.S. 
jurisdiction to high-seas areas beyond the 
EEZ. Today, we patrol these areas, as well 
as our EEZ—where we focus primarily on 
maritime boundary areas such as the 
U.S./Russian Convention Eine in the Bering 
Sea—to uphold U.S. sovereignty and protect 
America’s precious resources. 

Maritime law enforcement is a continuing 
theme running through our proud history 
of service to America. It requires a wide 
breadth of experience and skills: seaman¬ 
ship, diplomacy, legal expertise, and combat 
readiness. We have honed these skills for 
more than two centuries. No other U.S. 
armed service or federal agency possesses 
this combination of law enforcement capa¬ 
bilities and responsibilities, together with 
the legal authorities to carry them out. 
Controlling the use of the seas in the best 
interests of the United States is what 
maritime security is all about. 

Maritime Safety 

One of the most basic responsibilities 
of the U.S. government is to protect the 
lives and safety of Americans. In the 
maritime realm, the lead responsibility 
falls to the Coast Guard. In partnership 
with other federal agencies, state and local 
governments, marine industries, and 
individual mariners, we preserve safety 
at sea through a focused program of 
prevention, response, and investigation. 

,/#. 


Maritime Safety Missions 

♦ Search and Rescue 

♦ Marine Safety 

♦ Recreational Boating Safety 

♦ International Ice Patrol 

Our prevention activities include devel¬ 
oping commercial and recreational vessel 
standards, enforcing compliance with these 
standards, licensing commercial mariners, 
operating the International Ice Patrol to 
protect ships transiting the North Atlantic 
shipping lanes, and educating the public. 

We develop operating and construction 
criteria for many types of vessels, from 
commercial ships to recreational boats. 

The Coast Guard is America’s voice in the 
International Maritime Organization (IMO), 
which promulgates measures to improve 
shipping safety, pollution prevention, 
mariner training, and certification standards. 
We also are the agency primarily responsible 
for developing domestic shipping and 
navigation regulations. 

We ensure compliance with safety regu¬ 
lations in many ways. We inspect U.S. flag 
vessels, mobile offshore drilling units and 
marine facilities; examine foreign-flag ves¬ 
sels based on the potential safety and pol¬ 
lution risk they pose; review and approve 
plans for vessel construction, repair, and 
alteration: and document and admeasure 
U.S. flag vessels. The Port State Control 
program, which is aimed at eliminating 
sub-standard vessels from U.S. ports and 
waterways, is a key element in our safety 
enforcement program, for 95 percent of 
passenger ships and 75 percent of cargo 
ships operating in U.S. waters are foreign- 
flagged. 









Chapter One 



An HC-130 overflies an iceberg during an International Ice Patrol mission. 


As National Recreational Boating Safety 
Coordinator, the Coast Guard works to 
minimize loss of life, personal injury, 
property damage, and environmental harm 
associated with recreational boating. Our 
boating safety program involves public 
education programs, regulation of boat 
design and construction, approval of 
boating safety equipment, and courtesy 
marine examinations of boats for 
compliance with federal and state safety 
requirements. The all-volunteer Coast 
Guard Auxiliary plays a central role in 
this program. 


Nevertheless, the maritime arena is 
massive and complex and the sea powerful 
and unforgiving. Mishaps will occur despite 
our best efforts. When they do, the Coast 
Guard has a long heritage and proud tradition 
of responding immediately to save lives 
and property in peril. As the lead agency 


Coast Guard prevention activities 
in pursuit of maritime safety are often 
inseparable from those we perform to 
protect the marine environment or police 
the U.S. marine transportation system. 
Actions in one area often reinforce those 
required for other roles and missions. 

As a result, our numerous accident- 
prevention efforts have saved countless 
lives and contributed to the economic 
and environmental health of the nation. 


Coast Guard members prepare to rescue fishermen from their sinking vessel. 





9 















Chapter One 


for maritime search and rescue (SAR) in 
U.S. waters, we coordinate the SAR efforts 
of sea and airborne Coast Guard units, as 
well as those of other federal, state, and 
local responders. We also leverage the 
world’s merchant fleet to rescue mariners 
in distress around the globe through the 
Automated Mutual-assistance Vessel Rescue 
(AMVER) system. 

Finally, in addition to responding to a 
wide variety of time-critical maritime emer¬ 
gencies and accidents, we investigate their 
causes and determine whether laws have 
been violated or whether changes should 
be made to improve safety through our 
prevention programs. 

Protection of Natural Resources 

America’s marine waters and their 
ecosystems are vital to the health, well 
being, and economy of the nation. Our 
marine environment is among the most 
valuable and productive natural resources 
on Earth, containing one-fifth of the world’s 
fishery resources. It is also a region of 
extraordinary recreation, minerals-develop- 
ment, and transportation activities. For 
these reasons our role in carrying out the 
nation’s mandates to protect our marine 
environment is of vital importance. 

The Coast Guard’s protection of natural 
resources role dates to the 1820s, when 
Congress tasked the Revenue Marine to 
protect federal stocks of Florida live oak. 

As the exploitation of the nation’s valuable 
marine resources—whales, fur-bearing ani¬ 
mals, and fish—increased, we were given 
the duty to protect these resources as well. 
Today, with our U.S. FEZ supporting com¬ 


mercial and recreational fisheries worth 
more than $30 billion annually, we serve as 
the primary agency for at-sea fisheries 
enforcement. But our role has expanded 
over the last few decades to include enforc¬ 
ing laws intended to protect the environ¬ 
ment as a public good. As a result, we now 
actively protect sensitive marine habitats, 
marine mammals, and endangered marine 
species, and we enforce laws protecting our 
waters from the discharge of oil and other 
hazardous substances. 


Protection of Natural Resources 
Missions 

♦ Marine Environmental Protection 

♦ Domestic Fisheries Enforcement 

♦ Protected Living Marine Resource Law 
Enforcement 


We conduct a wide range of activities— 
education and prevention, enforcement, 
response and containment, and recovery— 
in support of our primary environmental 
protection mission areas: maritime pollu¬ 
tion enforcement, offshore lightering zone 
enforcement, domestic fisheries enforce¬ 
ment, and foreign vessel inspection. We 
also provide mission-critical command and 
control support and usually are the first 
responding force to environmental disas¬ 
ters on the seas. 

In addition, we are typically the lead 
agency for any ensuing response effort. 
Under the National Contingency Plan, Coast 
Guard Captains of the Port (COTP) are the 
pre-designated Federal On-Scene 
Coordinators (FOSC) for oil and hazardous 
substance incidents in all coastal and some 











Chapter One 


inland areas. The FOSC is, in reality, the 
President’s designated on-scene representa 
tive. As such, the FOSC is responsible for 
forging a well coordinated and effective 
response operation involving a diverse set 
of government and commercial entities in 
many emotionally charged and potentially 
dangerous emergency situations. 

Maritime Mobility 

The U.S. marine transportation system 
facilitates America’s global reach into for¬ 
eign markets and the nation’s engagement 
in world affairs, including protection of 
U.S. national interests through a national 
and international regulatory framework 
governing trade and commerce. This 
system includes the waterways and ports 
through which more than 2 billion tons of 
America’s foreign and domestic freight and 
3.3 billion barrels of oil move each year, 
plus the intermodal links that support our 
economic and military security. It also 
includes international and domestic passen¬ 
ger services, commercial and recreational 
fisheries, and recreational boating. The 



An HH-65A responds to an oil spill after the bulk tanker New Carissa 
ran aground one mile north of Coos Bay, Oregon, in February 1999. 


Coast Guard is a leading force for providing 
a safe, efficient marine transportation system. 

Maritime Mobility Missions 

♦ Aids to Navigation 

♦ Icebreaking Services 

♦ Bridge Administration 

♦ Waterways/Vessel Traffic Management 



The crew of the cutter 
Hornbeam (WLB 394) 
prepares to lift a buoy 
out of the water off 
Yorktown, Virginia. 


11 


A 





















Chapter One 


The Coast Guard carries out numerous 
port safety and security, waterways man¬ 
agement, and commercial vessel safety 
missions and tasks. We are responsible for 
providing a safe, efficient, and navigable 
waterway system to support domestic 
commerce, international trade, and the 
military sealift requirements for national 
defense. The services we provide include: 
long- and short-range aids to navigation; 
charting, tide/current/pilotage information 
through Notices to Mariners; vessel traffic 
services; domestic and international 
icebreaking and patrol services; technical 
assistance and advice; vessel safety stan¬ 
dards and inspection; and bridge adminis¬ 
tration standards and inspection. The Coast 
Guard is also America’s principal point of 
contact for international marine transporta¬ 
tion issues in the IMO. 


National Defense 

Throughout our history, the Coast Guard 
has served alongside the U.S. Navy in critical 
national defense missions, beginning with 
the Quasi-War with France in 1798, through 
the Civil War, World Wars 1 and 11, to the 
Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War. The 
close relationship between our services and 
between our parent agencies has evolved 
through more than two centuries of cooper¬ 
ation, culminating in a 1995 agreement 
between the Secretaries of Defense and 
Transportation. This agreement assigns 
to the Coast Guard five specific national 
defense missions in support of the Unified 
Commanders-in-Chief (ClNCs) in addition 
to our general defense operations and polar 
icebreaking duties. These missions—mar¬ 
itime interception operations; military 




The cutters Katmai Bay (WTGB 101) and Biscayne Bay (WTGB 104) break ice in the Straits of Mackinaw on the Great Lakes. 
















Chapter One 


environmental response operations; port 
operations, security, and defense; peace¬ 
time military engagement; and coastal 
sea control operations—require the Coast 
Guard to execute essential military func¬ 
tions and tasks in support of joint and 
combined forces in peacetime, crisis, 
and war.* 

In recent years, the ClNCs have requested 
Coast Guard cutters to conduct military 
interception operations, peacetime military 
engagement, and other supporting warfare 
tasks in all key areas of operations. They 
have done so because we offer unique and 
non-redundant capabilities and perform a 
vital, complementary role no other armed 
service can provide. Unlike the other services, 
we reach out to all elements of other coun¬ 
tries’ maritime interests and agencies, and 
our international humanitarian reputation 
often makes a Coast Guard presence much 
less threatening to foreign nations than 
would a purely military one. 


National Defense 
Missions 

♦ General Defense Operations 

♦ Maritime Interception Operations* 

♦ Military Environmental Response Operations* 

♦ Port Operations, Security, and Defense* 

♦ Peacetime Military Engagement* 

♦ Coastal Sea Control Operations* 

♦ Polar Icebreaking 

♦ Contained in DoT/DoD Memorandum of 
Agreement. 


Like the other U.S. armed services, 
warfare is one of the Coast Guard’s primary 
reasons for being. Because of our special 
multi-mission capabilities our units play 
unique roles in peacetime military engage¬ 
ment, humanitarian support, peacekeeping 
and peace-enforcement, crisis-response, 
and combat operations across the spectrum 
of U.S. global strategies and policies. 

We maintain a high state of readiness to 
operate as a specialized service within the 
Navy, and provide enor¬ 
mous value as a naval 
augmentation force for 
the nation to call upon as 
needed. We exercise com¬ 
mand responsibilities for 
the U.S. Maritime Defense 
Zones (MDZ) and our 
extensive involvement in 
coastal and port mar¬ 
itime functions at home 
give us vital capabilities 
that can be used any¬ 
where in the world they 
are needed. 



The crew of the high-endurance cutter Midgett (WHEC 726) renders honors to the Constellation 
(CV 64) off the coast of Pusan, Republic of Kora, at the beginning of a six-month deployment to 
the Western Pacific and Arabian Gulf in 1999. 


13 


A 












Chapter One 


Finally, we operate the nation’s only 
polar icebreakers, which enable our Service 
to project U.S. national presence and 
protect national interests in the Arctic and 
Antarctic regions. These polar vessels 
re-supply America’s polar facilities and 
support the research requirements of the 
National Science Foundation. 

The Coast Guard’s ability to fulfill its 
roles—saving lives and property at sea; 


protecting America’s maritime borders and 
suppressing violations of the law; protecting 
our marine environment; providing a safe, 
efficient marine transportation system; and 
defending the nation—makes us truly a 
unique instrument of national security. 

More than simply “guarding the coast,” we 
safeguard the global commons and bring crit¬ 
ical capabilities to the full-spectrum, multi¬ 
agency response needed to address America’s 
national and maritime security needs. 



A Bear-class medium endurance cutter fires its 76-mm/62-caliber gun during live-fire exercises. 
















Chapter Two: An Evolving Coast Guard 


Chapter Two 


The Coast Guard’s evolution parallels 
that of the United States, an “island nation” 
heavily dependent upon the seas surrounding 
it for commerce, resources, and a buffer 
against external threats. The predecessor 
agencies of the Coast Guard were created 
in response to threats to our nation’s vital 
interests that arose as the nation grew. As 
those threats evolved, so did the agencies’ 
duties and their relationships with each 
other. The eventual result was consolida¬ 
tion, beginning in 1915 with the merging of 
the Revenue Cutter Service and Life-Saving 
Service to form the U.S. Coast Guard. By 
1946, the Coast Guard had assimilated the 
remaining agencies as well. 

Since that time the Service has continued 
to add responsibilities. The result is that 
today’s Coast Guard, which carries out civil 
and military responsibilities touching virtually 
every facet of the maritime environment, 
bears little resemblance to its collection 
of predecessor agencies. Yet the process 
of integrating these agencies, each with 
its own culture and characteristics, has 
shaped the Coast Guard in lasting ways. 
Understanding the evolutionary process 
that led to the modern Coast Guard thus 
provides insight into the unique nature 
of our Service and the principles of Coast 
Guard operations that flow from it. 

Coast Guard history can be divided 
into six distinct periods. Our ability to 
uphold and protect the nation’s enduring 
maritime interests expanded—though not 
always evenly—during each of these periods. 


Coast Guard Predecessor Agencies 
(Year Established) 

Merged to Form the Coast Guard in 191 5: 

U.S. Revenue Cutter Service (1 790)* 

U.S. Life-Saving Service (1848) 

Assimilated into the Coast Guard: 

1939: U.S. Lighthouse Service (1789) 
1946: Steamboat Inspection Service 
(1 838) and Bureau of Navigation (1 884)** 


* Congress gave the service originally known as 
the Revenue Marine this statutory title in 1 863. 

** The Steamboat Inspection Service and the 
Bureau of Navigation had been combined to form 
the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation 
in 1932. 


1790 TO 1865: REVENUE 
PROTECTION AND MORE 

The founding of the Revenue Marine 
was stimulated by the financial needs of a 
new nation. After the Revolution, the 
United States was deep in debt and its 
emerging industries were under tremen¬ 
dous pressure from British imports. The 
American merchant marine, a mainstay of 
the colonial economy, had been weakened 
by losses in the war. To secure its political 
independence, the United States had to 
secure its financial independence. To 
accomplish this imperative, Alexander 
Hamilton, the first Secretary of the 
Treasury, proposed a bold economic plan 
relying heavily on income generated by 
customs duties and tonnage taxes that dis¬ 
criminated against foreign goods and ships. 


A 


15 






Chapter Two 


Hamilton 
understood that 
in order for his 
plan to succeed 
“the Treasury 
needed a strong 
right arm”^ to 
suppress smug¬ 
gling and ensure 
duties and taxes 
were paid. He 
thus sought 
authorization from Congress to build “so 
many boats or cutters, not exceeding ten, 
as may be employed for the protection of 
revenue.”^ Enacted on 4 August, the Tariff 
Act of 1790 authorized the building of ten 
cutters, but did not define their exact 
specifications. The majority of those built 
were “Baltimore Clipper”-type, two-masted 
schooners: “light, fast, easily-managed, 
seaworthy vessels, handy in beating in and 
out of harbors and through winding river 
channels.”'' The Tariff Act also authorized 
a professional corps of 100—the Revenue 


Periods in 

Coast Guard History 

♦ 1790-1865: Revenue Protection and 
More 

♦ 1 865-1 91 5: The Road to the Coast 
Guard 

♦ 1 91 5-1 91 6: Establishment of the U.S. 
Coast Guard 

♦ 1 91 7-1 946: A Service Forged by War, 
Crisis, and Consolidation 

♦ 1946-1972: Sorting Out Roles and 
Missions 

♦ 1 973-Today and Beyond: A Unique 
Instrument of National Security 


Marine—charged with a single duty: assis¬ 
tance in the collection of customs duties 
and tonnage taxes.^ 

Hamilton also understood that for the 
new nation to earn customs duties and 
tonnage taxes, ships had to make it safely 
to port. Essential to that end were light¬ 
houses, of which there were twelve in 1789, 
each erected and maintained by local inter¬ 
ests.® Hamilton realized that lighthouses 
were of national value; therefore, he proposed 
to Congress that responsibility for all 
aids to navigation be given to the central 
government. 



Boston Light is the site of America’s first lighthouse, built in 
1716. The first light was burned by retreating British forces 
during the Revolution. This is the second tower, built in 1783 
and modified in 1859. 

Congress agreed, and on 7 August 1789 
the Treasury Department was given respon¬ 
sibility for constructing and maintaining 
all of the nation’s aids to navigation.^ In 
Just its Ninth Act, the First Congress thus 
accepted that safety of life at sea is a public 
responsibility and “launched the national 
government upon its course of guarding 
the coast in the interest of safety and 
security afloat.”® 

Revenue Cutters for National Defense 

For nearly seven years. Revenue Marine 
cutters were the only armed ships the 



Alexander Hamilton 


















Chapter Two 


United States possessed, the Navy having 
been disbanded after the Revolution. 
Consequently, when the Quasi-War with 
France loomed in 1797 the Revenue Marine 
was available for duty, and Congress 
assigned the Service its first military tasks. 
In the same act that established the United 
States Navy, Congress authorized the 
President to augment the Navy with revenue 
cutters when needed.^ Eight revenue cutters 
were subsequently deployed under Navy 
control along the U.S. southern coast and 
in the Caribbean from 1798 to 1799, where 
they performed national defense duties and 
preyed upon French shipping. At the con¬ 
flict’s conclusion the Navy retained three 
cutters and returned five to the Revenue 
Marine. 

For the most part, the Navy considered 
the cutters to be too small and slow for 
strictly naval duties.^® Nevertheless, the 
need for sufficient numbers and types 
of warships led to the Revenue Marine’s 
participation in naval operations on many 
other occasions. With only six frigates in 
service, the Navy needed the services of 
more armed vessels as the nation entered 
the War of 1812 against Great Britain. 
Revenue cutters again were absorbed into 
Navy service, and one promptly captured 
the first British prize of the war. 

Shallow-draft revenue cutters proved 
useful in the small conflicts that erupted 
along the North American coastline as the 
nation expanded. From 1836 to 1839, cutters 
engaged in littoral and riverine operations 
during the Seminole War in Florida. 
Revenue Marine vessels also participated in 


amphibious operations during the Mexican 
War in 1846-1848. 

As the nation and the U.S. Navy grew, 
the relatively small numbers of armed vessels 
the Revenue Marine could contribute to 
national defense duties became relatively 
less important. However, the Service 
remained a repository for militarily useful, 
shallow-draft warships that were always in 
demand for littoral operations, and revenue 
cutter officers and crews performed many 
gallant actions in support of the Navy. 


Battle Streamers'^ Earned 
1790-1865 

♦ 1 790-1 797: Maritime Protection of the New 
Republic** 

♦ 1798-1801: French Quasi-War 

♦ 1812: War of 1812 

♦ 1 820-1 861: African Slave Trade Patrol 

♦ 1 822-1 830s: Operations against West Indian 
Pirates 

♦ 1835-1842: The Indian Wars 

♦ 1846-1848: Mexican War 

♦ 1861-1865: The Civil War 


* For more information, look up 
“Battle Streamers” in the Glossary. 

** Awarded solely to the Coast Guard. 



The revenue cutter Eagle engages the French privateer 
Bon Pere in 1799 during the Quasi-War with France. 


A 


17 













Chapter Two 


Supporting Maritime Trade 

From its earliest days, Revenue Marine 
efforts were not single-mindedly focused 
on customs collections. Instead, the Service 
adopted a wider role of protecting and 
fostering—as well as regulating—marine 
transportation and trade. During the 
presidencies of George Washington and 
John Adams, the Revenue Marine began 
maintaining aids to navigation, assisting 
lighthouse personnel, and charting coastal 
waters. It also carried out various health 
and quarantine measures at major ports. 

On the law enforcement side, beginning 
in 1819 the Revenue Marine worked with 
the Navy to drive pirates out of the coastal 
waters of the southern Atlantic and Gulf 
of Mexico, clearing those areas of threats 
to traders. 

The Service also took on the major 
task of finding and rescuing distressed 
mariners, something it had hitherto done 
on an ad hoc basis. In 1832, Treasury 
Secretary Louis McLane ordered Revenue 
Marine cutters to begin limited cruising 
during the winter months in order to 
provide assistance to mariners in distress. 
This experiment was so successful that 
in 1837 Congress authorized the President 
“to cause any suitable number of public 
vessels ... to cruise upon the coast, in the 
severe portion of the season ... to afford 
such aid to distressed navigators as their 
circumstances and necessities may require.”" 
Thus began a tradition of assistance to life 
and property that today is one of the Coast 
Guard’s most widely acclaimed missions. 

During this same period steamboats were 
plying the nation’s rivers and beginning to 


venture out to sea, but their boilers were 
notoriously unreliable and dangerous. 

In 1832, explosions destroyed fully 14 
percent of all steamers in operation, with 
the loss of a thousand or more lives. The 
situation cried out for action, and in 1838 
Congress enacted the first navigation law 
“better securing the lives ... on board 
vessels propelled in whole or in part by 
steam.This Act, which gave U.S. district 
judges authority to appoint steamboat 
inspectors, is considered the beginning 
of an organization that would evolve over 
the next several decades into the Steamboat 
Inspection Service within the Treasury 
Department. It also launched what has 
become “an enduring national policy of 
regulating private enterprise in the interest 
of safety afloat. 

Almost ten years later. Congressman 
William Newell of New Jersey, who had 
personally witnessed the grounding of the 
bark Terasto and the death of her crewmen 
years earlier, set in motion a series of 
legislative moves that led to the formation 
of the U.S. Life-Saving Service (LSS). The LSS 
and the Revenue Marine worked together 
closely—revenue service personnel often 
were temporarily reassigned to the LSS, 
and cutters provided material support to 
lifeboat stations along the U.S. coast. 

Law Enforcement in a Restive Nation 

The Revenue Marine aided the federal 
government in enforcing its sovereignty 
over U.S. affairs. Its actions were not always 
popular in a country that was still searching 
for a balance between central and state 
power. Congress passed the Embargo and 
Non-Intercourse Acts in 1807 and 1809, 







Chapter Two 


respectively, in an attempt to keep the 
United States neutral during the Napoleonic 
Wars. Both the Revenue Marine and the Navy 
were called upon to prevent proscribed 
trade—an uncomfortable policy that hurt 
large numbers of traders, shipping compa¬ 
nies, fishermen, and coastal communities.^^ 

Beginning in 1820, the Revenue Marine 
also began enforcing the laws against the 
importation of slaves, another duty that 
was not universally acclaimed. Revenue 
cutters captured a number of slave ships, 
but it was an exercise in frustration, 
because captured slavers rarely were suc¬ 
cessfully prosecuted in the courts. Despite 
the efforts of the Revenue Marine, the U.S. 
Navy and, later, the Royal Navy, the slave 
trade continued until the early 1860s. 

In 1832, the Revenue Marine was 
thrust into the national limelight when 
South Carolina refused to recognize U.S. 
tariff laws, challenging federal authority. 
President Andrew Jackson sent five cutters 
to Charleston “to take possession of any 
vessel arriving from a foreign port, and 
defend her against any attempts to dispos¬ 
sess the Customs Officers of her custody.”*® 
Due to its link to ocean trade and the 
revenue that it brought the U.S. Treasury, 
the Revenue Marine again 
became part of the federal 
government’s “long arm”— 
a role it would reprise 29 
years later as the country 
headed into civil war. 


Revenue Cutters in the War Between 
the States 

As war loomed after South Carolina 
passed its Ordinance of Secession in 
December 1860, the men and cutters of 
the Revenue Marine faced the same dilemma 
as their compatriots in the Army and Navy. 
“Each man in federal uniform was forced 
to decide, and to decide quickly, whether 
his supreme allegiance lay with a state or 
with the nation-state.”*^ Men chose both 
ways, and the Revenue Marine lost men 
and cutters as a result. 

Many, but not all, of those who remained 
were ordered by President Abraham Lincoln 
to combat service with the Navy.*® The cutter 
Harriet Lane, which took part in the abortive 
relief expedition to Fort Sumter in 1861, is 
credited with firing the first naval shots of 
the Civil War.*® Other cutters in service with 
the Navy performed blockade duty along 
the Atlantic coast, Chesapeake Bay, and 
Potomac River. Cutters not assigned to 
the Navy patrolled the shipping lanes to 
safeguard trade against Southern privateers 
and to assist distressed vessels at sea, and 
their usual duty of protecting the nation’s 
customs revenue took on an added urgency 
since that income was critical to the Union 
war effort. 



The revenue cutter Harriet Lane fires 
across the bow of the merchant ship 
Nashville as she enters the harbor 
at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1861 
at the outbreak of the Civil War. 


19 


A 









Chapter Two 


1865 TO 1915: THE ROAD TO 
THE COAST GUARD 

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the 
nation’s continued territorial growth and 
the ongoing expansion of its overseas trade 
highlighted the need for a more effective 
and efficient Revenue Marine and Life-Saving 
Service. Reforms that began in the late 
1860s ultimately improved the Services’ 
ability to serve the nation and laid the 
groundwork for the formation of the mod¬ 
ern Coast Guard. 

Sumner Kimball and Service Reform 


Battle Streamers Earned 
1865-1915 

♦ 1 898: Spanish-American War 

In 1869, George Boutwell, Secretary of 
the Treasury under President Ulysses S. 
Grant, formed an interim Revenue Marine 
Bureau under the leadership of N. Broughton 
Devereux. He in turn established boards 
designed to overhaul and reorganize the 
Revenue Cutter Service (RCS), as it was 
now known.The Revenue Marine Bureau 
became a permanent agency in 1871 under 
Treasury official Sumner I. Kimball. 

Kimball imme¬ 
diately set out to 
increase the profes¬ 
sionalism of the 
RCS. Six months 
after taking office 
he issued revised 
RCS regulations that 
provided for econo¬ 
my of operations. 


centralized control of the Service in head¬ 
quarters, and officer accessions and promo¬ 
tions based on merit rather than political 
influence or seniority. Meanwhile, Bureau 
Chief Devereux’s personnel board, headed 
by Captain John Faunce, USRCS, reviewed 
the qualifications of every RCS officer and 
removed those found to be incompetent or 
otherwise unfit for duty. Officers retained 
were given rank equal to their capabilities, 
and were thereafter promoted based on the 
results they achieved on the professional 
examinations mandated in Kimball’s regula¬ 
tions. As a result, by 1872 Kimball could 
proclaim his junior officer corps the best 
the RCS had ever possessed.^’ To ensure a 
continuous supply of competent junior 
officers, Kimball persuaded Congress in 
1876 to authorize establishment of a training 
school, thus laying the foundation for the 
U.S. Coast Guard Academy.^^ 

Kimball and his staff also implemented 
the recommendations of Devereux’s other 
board, which had analyzed the cutter fleet. 
Kimball reduced fleet tonnage by replacing 
large, aging cutters with smaller, speedier, 
and more efficient ones sized according to 
the needs of the ports where they were to 
be stationed. He also steadily replaced sail 
vessels with steamers. As a result, while 
from 1872 to 1881 the fleet size increased 
by just one cutter, 60 percent of the vessels 
had been built since 1869 and the ratio of 
steamers to sailing cutters had risen from 
2.5:1 to nearly 8:1.“ Thanks to the reforms 
of Kimball, Devereux, and Faunce, the RCS 
now boasted a highly professional corps 
manning modern cutters well suited to 
their mission. 




Sumner I. Kimball 










Chapter Two 


Upon appointment as chief of the 
Revenue Cutter Service, Kimball also 
instituted a program of inspecting the life¬ 
saving stations in New Jersey and Long 
Island, New York, where he discovered 
appalling conditions. As a result of his 
findings. Congress appropriated funds 
to establish the Life-Saving Service as a 
branch under the supervision of the RCS, 
to build lifesaving stations in states that 
did not already have them, and to staff 
the stations with paid surfmen. Kimball 
reorganized the RCS to accommodate the 
LSS and applied his considerable talents 
to systematically improving readiness, 
training, personnel, and equipment stan¬ 
dards. During this period the LSS also 
increased its reach, expanding to cover 
the Gulf of Mexico, Great Lakes, and Pacific 
coast of the United States. 


The Lifesaving Medals 

When Congress passed the Life-Saving 
Act of June 20, 1874, it established First and 
Second Class Medals to recognize daring and 
heroic rescues on the waters of the United 
States. The medals were renamed the Cold 
(First) and Silver (Second) Lifesaving Medals in 
1882. The Cold Lifesaving Medal is awarded 
for demonstrating extreme or heroic daring 
while rescuing or attempting to rescue persons 
in peril on the water at the risk of one’s own 
life. The Silver Lifesaving Medal is awarded 
for extraordinary effort that does not reach 
the criteria for the Cold Lifesaving Medal. 


Despite Kimball’s effort to inculcate 
discipline and professionalism, the Life- 
Saving Service was plagued by claims that 
unqualified lifesavers were given their 
Jobs solely for reasons of politics and 
patronage. Compounding the situation 


were several high profile tragedies, chief 
among them the loss of the warship Huron 
in November 1877 and the steamer 
Metropolis in January 1878, which 
produced a tremendous outcry against 
the LSS. Recognizing the need to improve 
rescue operations, on 18 June 1878, 
Congress passed legislation authorizing 
the construction of a number of additional 
lifesaving stations, removing the Life- 
Saving Service from the Revenue Cutter 
Service, and appointing Sumner Kimball 
general superintendent of the new Service.” 
Kimball steadily eliminated the system of 
political patronage that had grown with 
the LSS, replacing it with one based upon 
technical competence and non-partisanship. 
Coordination with the Revenue Cutter 
Service remained, however, since RCS offi¬ 
cers continued to serve as inspectors and 
auditors for the lifesavers. 

Growing Civil Duties 

Meanwhile, the United States had pur¬ 
chased the territory of Alaska in 1867, 
giving the Revenue Cutter Service a new 
set of sovereignty and resource protection 
responsibilities. In addition to increased 
law enforcement obligations, the RCS 
performed many civil and humanitarian 
duties, mounted scientific expeditions, 
protected fish and game, and was entrusted 
by the Bureau of Education to deliver teachers 
to the native peoples. Overall, the RCS was 
instrumental in establishing the power of 
the federal government in Alaska. In fact, 
one could say that for many years the RCS 
was the government along western Alaska’s 
coast. 


21 


A 






Chapter Two 


With the growth of the American mer¬ 
chant marine, the marine safety and water¬ 
ways management work of the revenue 
cutters-—supporting marine transportation 
and trade—also expanded. Although they 
acted without a clear statutory mandate, 
cutter crews had long performed many 
tasks related to the safety of harbors 
and cruising grounds. In 1889, however. 
Congress passed laws to regulate anchorages, 
giving the Revenue Cutter Service the duty 
of enforcing these new laws. In 1906, 
lawmakers authorized the Service to clear 
derelict hulks from harbors and their 
approaches. And, in 1910, the Service 
was given authority over some aspects 
of pleasure boating. 

The mission of safety at sea became 
important internationally with the sinking 
of the Titanic in 1912 with the loss of more 
than 1,500 lives. This tragic event 
led the Revenue Cutter Service to assume 
ice patrol duties the following year when 
the Navy, which originally had assigned 
two cruisers to perform the mission, 
announced that it needed the warships 
elsewhere. Private shipping and port 
organizations petitioned the Treasury 


Department to assign revenue cutters to 
what they considered an extremely valuable 
effort. The department granted its permis¬ 
sion, and two cutters undertook the mission. 
The assumption of this seemingly natural 
function, which the Coast Guard has now 
conducted without incident for more than 
85 years, reflected long-standing RCS 
practice in the Bering Sea. 

The last half of the nineteenth century 
also saw the RCS expand its mission of 
protecting marine resources. RCS personnel 
patrolled the Pribilof Islands off Alaska to 
prevent the ongoing slaughter of seals. 
The Service also worked with the Bureau 
of Fisheries to encourage proliferation of 
“food fishes” and regulated the harvesting 
and sale of sponges in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Spanish-American War 

By 1898, both the Navy and the Revenue 
Cutter Service were more modern, profes¬ 
sional organizations than they had been on 
the eve of the U.S. Civil War. Reflecting this 
state of affairs, the transfer of revenue 
cutters to Navy control during the Spanish- 
American War went relatively smoothly. 




Crewmen from the revenue cutter Bear haul supplies to whaling vessels 
trapped in the ice near Point Barrow, Alaska, in 1888. 



The revenue cutter Hudson during a joint Navy-Revenue Cutter Service 
raid on Spanish gunboats in Cardenas Bay, Cuba, during the Spanish- 
American War in 1898. 




















Chapter Two 


For three years prior to the outbreak of 
war, RCS cutters had conducted neutrality 
patrols that stretched from the waters off 
North Carolina to the Gulf of Mexico. They 
seized ships suspected of violating U.S. 
neutrality and smuggling ammunition and 
other supplies to Cuban rebels. 

All of this changed with the executive 
order directing the RCS to provide cutters 
to the Navy. Eight cutters joined Rear Admiral 
William Sampson’s North Atlantic Squadron 
on blockade duty off Cuba. Another cutter 
served as an escort and dispatch boat with 
Commodore George Dewey’s Asiatic 
Squadron, which defeated a Spanish naval 
force at Manila Bay, Philippines. Elsewhere, 
eleven cutters served under the Army’s 
tactical control, guarding important U.S. 
ports on the east and west coasts against 
possible attacks by Spanish raiders or 
warships.^® 

Once again, the Revenue Cutter Service 
provided important inshore support to the 
Navy. Eor instance, at the specific request 
of President William McKinley, Congress 
awarded medals to the officers and the 
crew of the cutter Hudson recognizing 
their bravery under fire during a combined 
Navy/Revenue Cutter Service raid on 
Spanish gunboats in Cardenas Bay, Cuba.^^ 

1915 TO 1916: ESTABLISHMENT 
OF THE U.S. COAST GUARD 

The process that resulted in the forma¬ 
tion of the U.S. Coast Guard actually began 
with an attempt to abolish the Revenue 


Cutter Service. In 1911, President William 
Taft appointed his economic adviser, 
Erederick A. Cleveland, to lead a commission 
to recommend ways to increase the economy 
and efficiency of government. The Cleveland 
Commission concluded that uni-functional 
agencies were more efficient and economical 
than multifunctional ones. The commission 
thus recommended combining the Lighthouse 
Service and Life-Saving Service, with their 
similar “protection” function, and recom¬ 
mended apportioning the duties and assets 
of the multifunctional RCS among other 
government agencies and departments. In 
particular, larger cutters and their crews 
would be transferred to the Navy. 

The Treasury, Navy, Commerce and 
Labor departments were asked to comment 
on the report. Secretary of Commerce and 
Labor Charles Nagel agreed that other 
departments could perform many RCS 
duties, but none could perform its lifesaving 
mission. This mission probably could be 
accomplished best, he wrote presciently, by 
combining the RCS, the Life-Saving Service, 
and the Lighthouse Service. While not sure 
where this new combined service should 
reside within the government, Nagel was 
adamant that it should not be in the Navy 
Department. 

Lor its part, the Navy Department stated 
that it could use the RCS cutters, since it 
was short of smaller, shallow-draft ships. 
But Secretary of the Navy George Meyer did 
not relish absorbing RCS personnel into the 
Navy. Moreover, he wrote; 


A 


23 





Chapter Two 


It is true that the chief functions of 
the Revenue Cutter Service can be 
performed by the Navy, but this 
cannot be done as stated in the 
Cleveland report in the regular per¬ 
formance of their military duties. 

All duties which interfere with the 
training of personnel for war are 
irregular and in a degree detrimen¬ 
tal to the efficiency of the fleet. 

The final responses came from Secretary 
of the Treasury Franklin MacVeagh and 
Revenue Cutter Service Captain-Commandant 
Ellsworth Price Bertholf. MacVeagh in 
particular was defiant in defense of the 
Service. He pointed to the close and 
successful working relationship that the 
RCS and the Life-Saving Service had 
developed, a relationship that would be 
severed by the abolition of the Revenue 
Cutter Service. He also took the Cleveland 
Commission to task over the alleged 
“efficiencies” that spreading RCS duties 
across the government would generate. 
Finally, he echoed the Navy’s argument 
concerning the nature of RCS and Navy 
duties, stating: 

[The Navy] could never give the 
kind and degree of attention that is 
required of the Revenue Cutter 
Service and its officers and men 
trained in their particular duties for 
120 years. The [RCS’s] work is alien 
to the work of the Navy, alien to the 
spirit of the Navy, and alien, I think, 
to its professional capacities and 
instincts—alien certainly to its 
training and tastes.^® 


Nevertheless, in 
April 1912, President 
Taft sent to Congress 
the Cleveland 
Commission’s final 
draft, and the other 
comments, with his 
recommendation 
that the legislators 
adopt the commis¬ 
sion’s findings. RCS supporters within the 
federal government, the press, and the 
general public fought the move, citing the 
Service’s heroic rescue work in particular 
as a reason not to disband the agency. 


There will not be two services. There will 
not be a Life-Saving or a Revenue Cutter 
Service. It will be the coast guard. 

— Captain-Commandant Ellsworth Price 
Bertholf, testifying on the RCS/LSS 
amalgamation, 1 91 5 


Meanwhile, Secretary MacVeagh ordered 
Bertholf and Sumner Kimball, head of the 
Life-Saving Service, to draft legislation that 
would join the RCS and LSS in a new service. 
When Taft and MacVeagh left office after 
the 1912 election. President Woodrow 
Wilson and his Treasury Secretary, William 
Gibbs McAdoo, strongly supported the bill 
combining the two services. The Senate 
passed the bill in 1914 and the House 
passed it on 20 January 1915, after 
a debate that centered more upon cutter 
officer and surfmen pay and retirement 
benefits than conceptual issues. 



Ellsworth Price Bertholf 


Ml 











Chapter Two 


Combining the civilian Life-Saving 
Service and the military Revenue Cutter 
Service—organizations with vastly different 
cultures—into a single military service 
presented Captain Bertholf, who was named 
the first Coast Guard Commandant, a delicate 
challenge. Bertholf was absolutely convinced 
that the military character of the RCS had 
to prevail, but large numbers of the life- 
savers had no desire to change status. 
Consequently, while the Life-Saving Service 
and Revenue Cutter Service were joined at 
the top in 1915, they operated as separate 
entities within the Coast Guard for more 
than 15 years. However, events soon would 
accelerate the development of a twentieth- 
century maritime security force formed by 
the union of these two nineteenth-century 
institutions. 

191 7 TO 1946: A SERVICE 
FORGED BY WAR, CRISIS, 

AND CONSOLIDATION 

Approximately two years after its 
founding, the Coast Guard was plunged 
into war. World War 1 was the first in 
a series of events that would shape the 
Service during the next several decades 
and expand its maritime duties. Some 
of these events, such as Prohibition and 
World War 11, permanently increased the 
size of the Coast Guard. 


Battle Streamers Earned 
1917-1938 

♦ 1917-1918: World War I 

♦ 1926-1927, 1930-1932: Yangtze Service 


The Coast Guard in the Great War 

World War 1 saw the Coast Guard trans¬ 
ferred to the Navy to fight overseas. In 
previous wars, RCS cutters had operated 
with the Navy but the Revenue Cutter 
Service itself had remained under Treasury 
Department control. During the Great War, 
however, the entire Service was transferred 
to Navy control as prescribed in the act 
that created the Coast Guard. 

In the period leading up to America’s 
entry into the war, the Coast Guard and 
Navy began rudimentary planning for 
integrating the Coast Guard into naval 
operations—a first in the history of both 
services. For the most part, the Navy 
believed that Coast Guard forces would 
be best suited for coastal patrol although 
a few of the larger cutters were designated 
for convoy escort operations. The services 
did not develop any detailed plans, but 
Coast Guard units did participate in some 
naval preparedness drills. 

The Coast Guard was actually mobilized 
and transferred to the Navy in April 1917. 
The Service sent six cutters to European 
waters that summer. For the remainder 
of the war, the cutters escorted convoys 
between Gibraltar and the British Isles. 
They also performed escort and patrol 
duties in the Mediterranean. 

At home, one of the Coast Guard’s major 
tasks was port security. Concern over the 
possibility of sabotage and accidents was 
acute in the aftermath of an October 1917 
shipboard explosion in the port of Halifax, 


A 


25 





Chapter Two 


Nova Scotia. In that incident, a French 
steamer loaded with ammunition collided 
with another vessel and caught fire. The 
resulting explosion leveled a large portion 
of the town and caused more than 1,000 
civilian deaths and numerous other 
casualties. U.S. ports handled more war 
time shipping than Halifax, making the 
issue of port security even more pressing. 

As a result, the Treasury Department, 
working closely with the Navy, established 
Coast Guard Captain of the Port offices 
in New York, New York; Philadelphia, 
Pennsylvania; Norfolk, Virginia; and Sault 
Ste. Marie, Michigan. The New York office 
soon became the Coast Guard’s largest 
command. 

Thus, the Coast Guard’s role of ensuring 
maritime mobility in U.S. ports and water¬ 
ways expanded considerably. Along the 
remainder of the U.S. coast, lifesaving 
station personnel doubled as coast-watchers, 
maintaining a lookout for potential infiltra¬ 
tors. To facilitate the reporting of suspi¬ 
cious activity, many lifesaving stations 
were tied into the Navy’s communication 
system, which had the effect of improving 
the Coast Guard’s peacetime communica¬ 
tions as well. 



The Coast Guard cutter Tampa, which was sunk by a German torpedo 
in September 1918, with 131 crewmen aboard. 


Interdiction and Build-Up 

When the war ended in November 
1918, cutters gradually began to return 
from overseas service, but the Coast Guard 
did not pass immediately back to Treasury 
Department control. A new political storm 
brewed as proponents from the Navy 
(including Navy Secretary Josephus 
Daniels), Congress, and even Coast Guard 
officers from the old Revenue Cutter 
Service, struggled to keep the Service 
permanently under the Navy Department. 
The Navy was determined to retain control 
of all government vessels, and most Coast 
Guard officers did not wish to relinquish 
the more generous pay, promotion, and 
social benefits that accrued to Navy officers. 
But in 1919—after strong protests and 
canny lobbying by Captain-Commandant 
Bertholf and Treasury Secretary Carter 
Glass—the Service was returned to the 
Treasury Department. 

Still, the period immediately following 
World War I was the most difficult the 
Coast Guard ever faced. Within just a few 
years, however, the Service would experience 
its greatest peacetime growth. The catalyst 
for this expansion was the 1920 National 
Prohibition (Volstead) Act, which prohibited 
the manufacture, sale, and transportation 
of alcoholic beverages. With no other federal 
agency prepared to enforce the new law at 
sea, much of the burden of enforcing the 
Volstead Act fell to the Coast Guard. 

The Coast Guard began its enforcement 
effort with just over 100 vessels to cover 
the vast expanses along the shores of the 
Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts. This situ¬ 
ation created several years of relative inef- 












Chapter Two 


fectiveness. Beginning in 1924, however, 
Congress appropriated funds sufficient to 
allow the Service to begin a major expansion 
to meet its responsibilities under the law. 
Over the next ten years, the Coast Guard 
budget increased dramatically and the 
Service grew accordingly. The enlisted force 
tripled in size, as did the fleet. The Service 
acquired and refurbished 20 obsolete Navy 
destroyers for use in picketing the foreign 
supply ships that lay offshore, outside U.S. 
territorial waters. A large force of specially 
designed Coast Guard patrol boats and harbor 
craft, plus a number of seized smuggling 
vessels, patrolled inshore waters and pursued 
the rumrunners’ contact boats. When even 
this proved insufficient, the Coast Guard 
began using aircraft to report suspicious 
vessels. This action marked the rebirth of 
Coast Guard aviation.^® 

While this buildup and decade-long 
effort did have a deterrent effect on the 
rumrunners, the interdiction effort ultimately 
failed because the law was unpopular and the 
demand for alcohol never ceased. In 1933, 
Congress finally repealed the Volstead Act. 
Still, the Coast Guard benefited from its 
Prohibition experience. Patrol boats built 
during this period conducted numerous 
missions for many decades and served 
as prototypes for later vessel classes. 

Coast Guard communications equipment 
and procedures and intelligence methods 
were significantly improved. Tactics and 
techniques developed to combat the 
rumrunners would be used decades later 
to combat drug smugglers. And the Service 
developed international law expertise 
through its efforts to increase the limit 
of the territorial sea from three to 12 
nautical miles. 



One of 20 former Navy destroyers transferred to the Coast Guard 
for deepwater interdiction duties during Prohibition. 


The Waesche Consolidation 

After Prohibition, Rear Admiral Russell 
R. Waesche, Sr., Coast Guard Commandant 
from 1936 to 1945, guided one of the 
greatest transitions in the Service’s history. 
In many ways, his vision was responsible 
for today’s Coast Guard. Waesche oversaw 
the addition of many responsibilities, the 
most sweeping of which was Congress’ 
authorizing the Coast Guard to enforce 
all U.S. laws at sea and within territorial 
waters. Prior to this, most observers had 
presumed that the Coast Guard had sweeping 
law enforcement authority at sea. However, 
a 1927 Supreme Court case had called this 
authority into question. At the Treasury 
Department’s request, in 1936 Congress 
clarified the situation, granting Coast Guard 
personnel the authority to make “inquiries, 
examinations, inspections, searches, 
seizures, and arrests upon the high seas 
and the navigable waters of the United 
States.’’^' The Service was also tasked to 
break ice in the nation’s harbors and 
channels, and it took on a small role in the 
certification of merchant seamen. That role 
expanded in 1938 to include administration 
of the U.S. Maritime Service, formed that 




27 

















Chapter Two 


year to improve the efficiency of merchant 
mariners. 

Waesche also saw the need to regulate 
boating activity in the nation’s waters. 
Lacking the manpower to perform this 
function, in 1939 he created the volunteer 
force now called the Coast Guard Auxiliary 
to meet this specific need. By 1940, the 
Auxiliary had 2,600 personnel and 2,300 
boats that augmented the Coast Guard 
at a fraction of the cost of a full-time force. 
Waesche’s greatest force multiplier, however, 
was the Coast Guard Reserve, created in 
1941, which gave the Coast Guard the 
potential to perform many roles and mis¬ 
sions that would otherwise be impossible 
for a small service. 

Also in 1939, as part of President 
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reorganization 
plans, the U.S. Light-house Service was 
placed under the Coast Guard. Waesche 
welcomed this addition, recognizing that it 
gave the Coast Guard an all-encompassing 
role in ensuring the safety of the nation’s 
waterways. Absorbing the Lighthouse 
Service also added nearly 50 percent more 
civilians to the Service, caused a district 
reorganization, and brought many of the 
lighthouse personnel into the Service’s 
military organization. 

Additional responsibilities continued 
to accrue throughout Waesche’s tenure. 

In 1940, for example, the Coast Guard 
was tasked with open-ocean weather patrol 
duties in the northern Pacific Ocean and 
the North Atlantic, a service it would 
continue to perform for nearly 40 years. 



Russell R. Waesche, Sr. 

National Defense to the Fore 


With the outbreak of war in Europe 
in 1939, the Coast Guard—having had its 
civil responsibilities vastly increased since 
World War I—once again shifted focus to 
emphasize military preparedness, with its 
forces playing a major role in asserting 
national sovereignty over U.S. waters and 
shipping. The Coast Guard began carrying 
out neutrality patrols in the North Atlantic 
in September 1939 and put port security 
forces on a wartime footing the following 
June. 

U.S. strategists also were concerned 
that Germany would establish a military 
presence on Greenland, which had been 
incorporated in the U.S. hemispheric 
defense system, and sought to station 
U.S. armed forces on the frozen island. 

The State Department believed that the 
dispatch of military forces to Greenland 
would be unnecessarily provocative.^^ 
Eventually, however, the Coast Guard was 
deemed an acceptable U.S. military presence, 
and so in April 1941 the Coast Guard took 
responsibility for cold-weather operations 
in Greenland. 













Chapter Two 


Battle Streamers Earned 
19391946 

♦ 1 939-1 941: American Defense Service 

♦ 1 941-1 942: Philippine Defense 

♦ 1 941-1 946; World War II - American Theater 

♦ 1 941-1 946: World War II - Pacific Theater 

♦ 1 941-1 945: World War II - European-African- 
Middle Eastern Theater 

♦ 1 944-1 945: Philippine Liberation 

♦ 1941-1942, 1944-1945: Philippine 
Independence and Philippine Presidential Unit 
Citation 

♦ 1 945: World War II Victory 
Other WW II: 

Croix de Guerre (France), Presidential Unit 
Citation, Navy Occupation Service 


By Executive Order 8929 of 1 November 
1941, roughly a month before the Japanese 
attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, President 
Roosevelt transferred the Coast Guard to 
the Navy for the second time in its history. 
Thereafter, Coast Guard cutters and aircraft 
performed extensive convoy protection 
duties in the Atlantic (sinking 12 German 
U-boats), while other Service craft performed 
area anti-submarine patrols. Coast Guard 
craft rescued the survivors of torpedo 
attacks off the U.S. coast, while Coast Guard 
coast-watchers maintained beach patrols 
and guarded U.S. ports. This wartime mission 
once again foreshadowed a future peacetime 
mission—in this case the Service’s Maritime 
Defense Zone duties. Coast Guard personnel 
manned Navy destroyer escorts as well as 
Navy and Army amphibious ships and craft, 
and took part in every major amphibious 
invasion of the war. 


Coast Guard person¬ 
nel served in-theater 
around the globe during 
the war years, but the 
Service also made a sig¬ 
nificant contribution to 
the war effort in rear 
areas, protecting and facil¬ 
itating the movement of 
men and materiel by sea. 
Coast Guard activities in 
the maritime mobility 
area—providing port 
security, supervising the 
movement of dangerous 
cargoes, controlling mer¬ 
chant vessel traffic, main¬ 
taining aids to navigation, 
and breaking ice—often 



A 


Allied troops wade to shore from a Coast Guard-crewed landing craft during the 
Normandy invasion, 6 June 1944. 


29 
























Chapter Two 




received less public attention than its 
direct combat duties, but they were indis¬ 
pensable to prosecution of the war.^'* 

World War 11 also gave the Coast Guard 
the opportunity to experiment and innovate. 
A Coast Guard officer, Lieutenant Commander 
Lawrence M. Harding, shepherded develop¬ 
ment of a new electronic long-range aid to 
navigation—LORAN—and the subsequent 
development of a LORAN network. 

During the war a few far-sighted officers 
doggedly pursued the development of heli¬ 
copters for use in search and rescue, law 
enforcement, and anti-submarine patrol. 
Initially cool to the idea until after a 
demonstration. Admiral Waesche urged 
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest 
King to develop the helicopter for naval 
use. King in turn ordered the Coast Guard 
to obtain helicopters for use in anti-subma¬ 
rine surveillance. The Service acquired 
a handful of aircraft and trained Coast 
Guard, Navy, and British aircrews to fly 
them. While they never demonstrated much 
success against submarines, these helicopters 
demonstrated an immediate usefulness in 
search and rescue, foreshadowing the role 
for which they eventually would become 
famous. 



An HNS-1 helicopter, piloted by Coast Guard 
Lieutenant, j.g., Stewart Graham, lifts off from the 
converted merchant ship Daghestan in January 1944, 
while in convoy from New York to Liverpool, England. 


In addition to driving mission and 
technological innovation, the war had a 
major effect on the size and shape of the 
Service. During the war years the Coast 
Guard experienced a nearly ten-fold 
increase in personnel strength. The 
Roosevelt Administration also thought 
it would be convenient and cost-effective 
to consolidate the functions of the Bureau 
of Marine Inspection and Navigation into 
the Coast Guard. The roots of this agency 
stretched back to 1838, when the Steamboat 
Inspection Service was created. In 1932, 
this agency had merged with the Bureau 
of Navigation, which had been created in 
1884. Now called the Bureau of Marine 
Inspection and Navigation, this civilian 
agency joined the Coast Guard permanently 
in 1946. As a result. Coast Guard missions 
now touched every facet of domestic mar¬ 
itime activity. The Service’s duties expanded 
overseas as well, as the United States took 
the lead in shaping the postwar world. 

1946 TO 1972: SORTING OUT 
ROLES AND MISSIONS 


Battle Streamers Earned 
1946-1965 

♦ 1945-1957: China Service 

♦ 1950-1954: Korean Service 

♦ 1958-1965: Armed Forces Expeditionary 
Service 


The post-World War 11 period brought 
further changes as the Coast Guard inherited 
new missions and once again had its roles 
redefined and broadened. Perhaps foreseeing 
this expansion, and mindful of the growing 
pains the Service had suffered during the 
war, the far-sighted Waesche created a 










Chapter Two 


committee in 1944 to develop a compre¬ 
hensive plan to retain after the war the 
functions the Service had absorbed in the 
1930s and 1940s. 

The 1948 Ebasco Study pointed to an 
agency that was under-manned and under¬ 
equipped to perform its myriad and wide- 
ranging missions. This led to legislation 
formally delineating the Coast Guard’s 
duties. These included port management, 
control, and security functions; vessel 
traffic services: coastal security: and some 
military roles. 

An International Role in Peacetime and 
in War 

The Coast Guard obtained a global 
peacetime presence as part of its efforts 
to safeguard transoceanic navigation. The 
Service retained operational control over 
a regional wide-area system of LORAN 
transmitter sites. Support for a burgeoning 
civilian aviation system also led to Coast 
Guard cutters continuing to man a system 
of open-ocean weather stations until 1977, 
by which time improvements in weather 
forecasting and aircraft navigation and 
safety had made the service unnecessary. 
On-scene to provide weather and communi¬ 
cations support to transatlantic and 
transpacific flights, cutters on ocean station 
duty conducted several high profile at-sea 
rescues of the passengers and crews of 
civil and military aircraft. Perhaps the most 
significant of these was the rescue of 62 
passengers and 7 crewmembers from the 
flying boat Bermuda Sky Queen by the cut¬ 
ter Bibb operating on a mid-Atlantic ocean 
station. Cutters continued to conduct inter¬ 
national ice patrols as well, although this 


duty eventually became the province of 
Coast Guard aircraft detachments. 

The Coast Guard’s flexibility and diverse 
capabilities allowed the Service to support 
broader American political and military 
policy overseas in the post-war period. 

For instance, the Service helped establish 
the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency and 
the navies of Korea, the Philippines, and 
other countries. It also participated (and 
still participates) in numerous military 
exercises, including UNITAS exercises with 
South American navies, and has conducted 
training with small navies and coast guards 
around the world. 

The Coast Guard participated only 
marginally in the Korean War. During the 
Vietnam War, however, the Coast Guard 
played a major role in “Operation Market 
Time,” which involved the interdiction of 
trawlers being used by North Vietnam for 
infiltration and resupply activities. 

Working together, the U.S. Navy and the 
South Vietnamese Navy (VNN) had attempted 
to halt the flow of men and materiel, but 
the VNN’s lack of training and the U.S. 
Navy’s lack of shallow-draft warships and 
expertise operating in coastal waters 
frustrated the effort. Navy Secretary Paul 
Nitze, therefore, wrote Treasury Secretary 
Henry Fowler for assistance. After noting 
the Seventh Fleet’s deficiencies, Nitze 
wrote: “We are therefore attempting to 
locate a source of more suitable patrol 
craft. Such characteristics as high speed, 
shallow draft, sea-keeping ability, radar, 
and communications equipment are 
important considerations.”^® 


A 


31 





Chapter Two 


Battle Streamers Earned 
1962-1975 

♦ 1 962-1 975: Vietnam Service 

Other Vietnam: 

Navy Unit Commendation 
National Defense Service 
Army Meritorious Unit Commendation 
Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation 
RVN Armed Forces 

Meritorious Unit Commendation, 
Gallantry Cross w/Palm 
RVN Meritorious Unit Citation, 

Civil Actions Medal First Class 
Color w/Palm 


Coast Guard Commandant Admiral 
Edwin Roland believed that Coast Guard 
forces were tailor-made for the mission. 

He also feared that if the Coast Guard did 
not play a greater role than it had during 
the Korean War, the Service might lose its 
status as an armed service. Consequently, 
after deliberations in Washington and in 
the field, 26 Coast Guard 82-foot patrol 
boats (WPBs) and their crews were assigned 
to Market Time. 

In March 1967, when the Navy needed 
additional destroyers for naval gunfire 


support duties, it looked to U.S. Navy 
ships conducting Operation Market Time. 
Secretary Nitze turned again to the Coast 
Guard to fill the gaps in surveillance and 
interdiction opened by this move, requesting 
“that the Treasury Department assist the 
Department of the Navy by assigning five 
high-endurance cutters to augment Market 
Time forces.The Coast Guard responded 
by deploying a squadron of high-endurance 
cutters (WHEC). 

Together, Coast Guard, Navy, and VNN 
assets formed a gauntlet through which 
Viet Cong vessels had to run. Navy patrol 
aircraft monitored vessels more than 100 
nautical miles from the coast. Navy radar 
picket ships and WHECs formed a second 
barrier 40 nautical miles out. Coast Guard 
patrol boats. Navy Swift boats, and VNN 
junks formed the final barrier just off the 
coast and up South Vietnam’s rivers. By the 
end of Operation Market Time, the Coast 
Guard had boarded nearly a quarter of a 
million sampans and junks and destroyed 
more than 2,000. The maritime border of 
South Vietnam was sealed and taken away 
as a resupply route for communist forces. 


Five Coast Guard 
311-foot, high- 
endurance cutters 
assigned to Operation 
Market Time in Vietnam 
tied up alongside the 
Navy repair ship Jason 
(AR 8). 


















Chapter Two 


Expanding Civil Responsibilities 

The Coast Guard’s civil duties continued 
to expand in the period following World 
War II. In 1958, the Service developed 
AMVER, the Automated Mutual-assistance 
Vessel Rescue system, a ship reporting 
system able to identify other ships in the 
area of a ship in distress that then could 
be sent to assist.^® In 1965, the Service took 
responsibility for coordinating all search 
and rescue operations in U.S. waters, and 
that same year accepted responsibility for 
all of the nation’s icebreaking duties. Until 
then, both the Navy and the Coast Guard 
had performed icebreaking duties. When 
the Navy decided its personnel and 
resources should be devoted more to tradi¬ 
tional naval combat operations, however, 
it offered the mission and its five-ship 
icebreaking fleet to the Coast Guard. The 
two services signed a memorandum of 
understanding and the ships were gradually 
phased into the Coast Guard, which now 
became the primary U.S. surface presence 
in the polar regions. 

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard’s traditional 
maritime law and sovereignty enforcement 
role remained important. Circumstances in 
Cuba, for example, handed the Service a 
greater role in enforcing U.S. immigration 
policy and controlling the flow of sea-borne 
migrants. The Coast Guard began patrols 
to enforce U.S. neutrality and to aid Cuban 
refugees in the Florida Straits in 1961. 
Then, in 1964, the Camarioca boatlift first 
tested the Service’s ability to respond to 
a mass exodus. Repeated mass migrations 
from Cuba and Haiti over the next three 
decades would hone Coast Guard capabilities 
in this area. 



The crew of a Coast Guard patrol boat, on duty with U.S. naval forces in 
Vietnam, searches a Vietnamese craft for weapons and supplies. 


Finding a New Home 

As the years progressed, the Coast 
Guard found itself in a familiar situation. 
The Service performed so many types of 
maritime missions, in so many locales, 
and for so many purposes, that the Service 
did not fit perfectly in any one federal 
department. While the Service and most 
of its predecessors had been part of the 
Treasury Department since their founding, 
the traditional, direct link between revenue 
collection and the Service had faded. 

The result was President Lyndon 
Johnson’s decision to include the Coast 
Guard in the newly formed Transportation 
Department in April 1967. In the beginning. 
Treasury Secretary Fowler and Coast Guard 
Commandant Roland protested, but the 
President had already decided that many 
Coast Guard functions belonged in the new 
department. Rather than see those func¬ 
tions stripped from the Service, Roland 


A 


33 












Chapter Two 


cooperated in the transfer. Nevertheless, 
he successfully communicated his concern 
that the Coast Guard remain a military 
service. 

1973 TO TODAY AND BEYOND: 

A UNIQUE INSTRUMENT OF 
NATIONAL SECURITY 

In the post-Vietnam era, the United 
States has continued to face complex and 
varied threats. Increasingly, the Coast 
Guard’s unique status as military service 
and law enforcement agency has brought 
it to the forefront of U.S. maritime security 
efforts. For instance, social upheaval in the 
Western Hemisphere highlighted the critical 
importance of the Coast Guard’s alien 
migrant interdiction mission. The Service 
faced the challenge of mass migrations 
from Cuba in 1980 and 1994 and from 
Haiti in 1992 and 1994. 


The Coast Guard’s environmental pro¬ 
tection responsibilities grew as well. While 
the Revenue Marine had been tasked with 
duties protecting valuable natural resources 
as early as 1822,^° and the marine environ¬ 
ment as a whole beginning with the Refuse 
Act of 1899,^^ growing environmental 
awareness in the United States pushed the 
Coast Guard deeper into the anti-pollution 
realm. 

The Torrey Canyon and Amoco Cadiz 
disasters led to the Federal Water Pollution 
Control Act of 1972, in which Congress set 
a no-discharge standard for oil in U.S. navi¬ 
gable waters. The practice of discharging 
shipboard oily residues at sea led to an 
October 1973 convention adopted by the 
International Conference on Marine Pollution 
prohibiting oil discharges within 50 miles 
of shore. 


The influx of illegal drugs also came 
to the fore as a national security problem 
in the 1970s. The Coast Guard took on the 
primary maritime interdiction role, and 
eventually expanded its Caribbean presence 
to disrupt the illegal drug supply chain 
along its entire length. The Service’s efforts 
effectively neutralized the seaborne impor¬ 
tation of marijuana, which slowed to a 
trickle after a prolonged and concerted 
Coast Guard effort. Unfortunately, as the 
marijuana trade dried up, the shipment 
of cocaine began to increase. 


Battle Streamers Earned 
1973-Present 

♦ 1 991-1 995: Southwest Asia Service 



Given responsibility for coordinating 
and administering oil spill clean up in the 
maritime realm, the Coast Guard deployed 
a multi-faceted strategy for responding to 
spills and identifying responsible parties. 
The Service developed techniques to detect 
spills from the air and to match samples of 
spilled oil to the oil remaining in the tanks 
of suspected polluters. Three Strike Teams 
composed of Coast Guard personnel 
trained to operate special oil spill clean-up 
equipment were stood up, one each on the 
Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts. And each 
Captain of the Port identified a local net¬ 
work of contractors who could respond to 
spill reports. 

Yet the spills continued. On 15 December 
1976, the Liberian tanker Argo Merchant, 
carrying 7.5 million gallons of oil, grounded 







Chapter Two 


off Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. While 
favorable winds drove the oil out to sea 
instead of onto the beaches of New England, 
this ecological near-miss, together with the 
fourteen more tanker accidents that occurred 
in or near American waters during the next 
ten weeks, led to the Port and Tanker Safety 
Act of 1978. This legislation created a 200- 
mile pollution control zone and authorized 
the Coast Guard to force substandard foreign 
tankers out of the U.S. trade. 

The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince 
William Sound, Alaska, however, had the 
greatest impact on the Coast Guard’s role 
as protector of the marine environment. 
The Service would not only oversee the 
cleanup, but the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 
(OPA 90) passed by Congress in the wake 
of the spill gave the Coast Guard one of its 
single largest legislative mandates in its 
history. OPA 90 assigned the Service a sig¬ 
nificantly increased role in spill response, 
vessel inspection, and the oversight of 
liability actions. 

Another rising environmental concern 
in the 1970s pertained to the perceived 
depredation of America’s abundant fisheries 
resources by large foreign fishing fleets. 

In the 1950s, the United States had imple¬ 
mented several international conventions 
intended to protect certain fish stocks. 
The Coast Guard documented violations 
by foreign fishing vessels but had little 
direct enforcement authority. Congress 
addressed the situation in 1964 with the 
Bartlett Act, which prohibited foreign fishing 
in U.S. territorial waters and authorized the 
seizure of foreign vessels in violation of 
the act. Later amendments expanded the 
protected area to include the 12-mile 


contiguous zone and increased the maximum 
penalty for violations. 

In 1976, when even these protections 
were deemed inadequate. Congress passed 
the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation 
and Management Act. The Act established a 
200-nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone; 
created eight Regional Fishery Management 
Councils, tasked to develop fishery man¬ 
agement plans to protect America’s fish 
stocks; and placed the primary responsibility 
for at-sea enforcement of the nation’s fish¬ 
eries laws with the Coast Guard. In the 
ensuing decades, the Service acquired 
authority to enforce a series of legislative 
enactments and international agreements 
intended to protect the nation’s living 
marine resources. 

The Service has played a role in post- 
Cold War military operations as well. Coast 
Guard port security units deployed to the 
Persian Gulf during Operations Desert 
Shield and Desert Storm in 1990-1991. In 
recent years, the unified Commanders-in- 



The Exxon Valdez oil tanker aground in Prince William 
Sound, Alaska, in 1989. 


A 


35 










Chapter Two 


Chief have requested and been provided 
cutters to conduct maritime interception 
operations, peacetime military engagement, 
and other supporting warfare tasks for all 
three forward-deployed Navy Fleets.''^ 

During Operations Support Democracy 
(November 1993-August 1995) and Uphold 
Democracy (October 1994-March 1995), 
Coast Guard cutters, buoy tenders, patrol 
boats, and port security units supported 
United Nations-led operations to restore 
democratic institutions in Haiti. Two port 
security units, a harbor defense command 
unit, five law enforcement detachments, 
and 13 cutters carried out operations that 
included maritime surveillance and inter¬ 
diction, search and rescue coverage for 
in-transit U.S. aircraft, and establishing 
and restoring aids to navigation. 


The Service also has commanded the 
Maritime Defense Zones since they were 
created in 1984 to provide for the coastal 
defense of the United States. In 1994, the 
MDZ concept was expanded to include 
defense of foreign harbors, expeditionary 
port security, and coastal sea control. 
Working closely with Navy coastal warfare 
units. Coast Guard reserve and active duty 
forces maintain the ability to protect strategic 



U.S. ports, as well as critical foreign ports 
of embarkation and debarkation. 

ECHOES FROM THE PAST 

Over the course of its history, the Coast 
Guard has evolved into a multi-mission 
service that is focused on the full spectrum 
of maritime affairs. Reflections of this 
generalist outlook can be seen in the organ¬ 
ization, training, and force structure of the 
modern Coast Guard. Unlike other services, 
the Coast Guard has no specialized staff 
corps. Likewise, as a relatively small service 
with a limited budget, the Coast Guard has 
needed durable platforms that are flexible 
enough to be used for many different types 
of missions. 

As the country’s maritime “jack of all 
trades,” the Coast Guard has always needed 
to maintain a high degree of flexibility and 
operational readiness. In the process, the 
Service has been able to generate synergies 
between what might otherwise have been 
seen as pronounced contradictions. The 
Coast Guard calls upon its military character 
to ably perform dangerous and difficult 
civil operations. Moreover, as the Revenue 
Cutter Service merged with civilian agencies 
to form the modern, military Coast Guard, 
our Service charter has broadened to address 
virtually every aspect of U.S. maritime affairs, 
in peacetime and in war. This continued the 
process of building a national service that 
oversees America’s civil use of the seas and 
protects its waterborne commerce, coasts, 
and interests from a wide variety of 
threats. 












Chapter Three 


Chapter Three: The Hature of Our Service 


The nature of our Service has evolved 
as we accumulated new roles and missions 
from a variety of sources, including Executive 
Orders, congressional action, and the absorp¬ 
tion of different agencies. These additional 
roles and missions were assigned throughout 
the years for a very pragmatic reason—we 
were willing to perform the assigned missions 
and able to perform them effectively and 
efficiently. 

In assuming new duties, we developed 
the ability to conduct a variety of missions 
with the same equipment and people. We 
also developed a distinct nature, one shaped 
by our core values and by our military, 
multi-mission, and maritime mandate. 

CORE VALUES 

While the formal statement of our core 
values of Honor, Respect, and Devotion to 
Duty is a relatively recent event, the values 
themselves are deeply rooted in the heritage 
of commitment and service that distinguishes 
the U.S. Coast Guard. From revenue cutter 
crews protecting a fledgling nation from 
privateers and smugglers, to sturdy surfmen 
fighting howling gales to rescue shipwrecked 
mariners, to gallant small boat coxswains 
landing Marines at Guadalcanal, to the men 
and women of today who stop smugglers, 
rescue desperate migrants, and protect 
endangered marine species. Coast Guard 
people have embraced and lived these values. 

Our core values are the bedrock upon 
which our character and operating principles 
are built. They provide fundamental guidance 


Coast Guard Core Values 

Honor—Integrity is our standard. We demon¬ 
strate uncompromising ethical conduct and 
moral behavior in all of our personal and 
organizational actions. We are loyal and 
accountable to the public trust. 

Respect—We value our diverse workforce. 

We treat each other and those we serve with 
fairness, dignity, respect, and compassion. 
We encourage individual opportunity and 
growth. We encourage creativity through 
empowerment. We work as a team. 

Devotion to Duty—We are professionals, 
military and civilian, who seek responsibility, 
accept accountability, and are committed to 
the successful achievement of our organiza¬ 
tional goals. We exist to serve. We serve 
with pride. 



U.S. Life-Saving Service rescue boat underway (most likely 
from Sandy Hook, New Jersey). 


for our actions, both on duty and in our 
private lives, and they challenge us to live 
up to the high standards of excellence 
exhibited by our predecessors. Whether 
active duty, reserve, civilian, or auxiliary, 
our core values bind us together and guide 
our conduct, performance, and decisions. 


A 


37 















Chapter Three 



Members of Officer Candidate School dress left while at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. 


A MILITARY, MULTI-MISSION, 
MARITIME SERVICE 

We call ourselves a “military,” “multi¬ 
mission,” and “maritime” service. These 
three descriptors provide a basis for under¬ 
standing the character and structure of 
the Coast Guard and are the result of our 
complex and varied history. They are also 
critical to understanding the Coast Guard’s 
role as a unique instrument of America’s 
national security. 

Military 

The military character of the Coast 
Guard has been the subject of consideration 
and comment throughout our history, and 
it is consistent with the original design of 
our founder, Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton 
originally suggested a law enforcement 
organization of “a few armed vessels, 
judiciously stationed at the entrances of 
our ports, might at a small expense be 


made useful sentinels of the laws.” He 
insisted that this organization be organized 
along military lines, and convinced President 
George Washington to commission Revenue 
Marine officers. 

Title 14 of the U.S. Code specifies that 
the Coast Guard is a military service and 
a branch of the Armed Forces of the United 
States at all times, not just in wartime or 
when the President directs. The 1915 
legislation establishing the Coast Guard 
recognized again that military discipline 
and training were critical for the Coast 
Guard’s national defense duties, and useful 
for the performance of dangerous and 
difficult civil duties. That reality continues 
today. 

The military profession is like no other. 
Members of the military voluntarily limit 
some of their freedoms—including even 



















Chapter Three 


their constitutional freedom of speech—in 
order to serve. Likewise, service members 
cannot just quit; they must continue to 
serve until their term is up and must obey 
all lawful orders while doing so. And those 
orders may include undertaking tasks likely 
to result in members giving the last full 
measure of devotion—their lives—in service 
to our country. This requirement sets mili¬ 
tary people apart from the members of 
every other profession. Military forces also 
are charged with carrying out the systematic 
application of violence in service to the 
nation. As members of an armed service, 
we are called to act in accordance with 
these responsibilities, and we have. 

The Coast Guard has participated in all 
our nation’s wars as a naval augmentation 
force, providing specialized capabilities as 
required for the defense of our nation. 
Changes in the national security environment 
since the end of the Cold War, however, 
have caused decision-makers to reexamine 
the Coast Guard’s military role. Peacetime 
military engagement and “operations other 
than war,” areas of traditional Coast Guard 
expertise, have risen in importance within 
the national security calculus. The Coast 
Guard has wartime missions today that 
are based on logical extensions of its 
peacetime duties. 

The result of this reexamination was 
a Memorandum of Agreement between the 
Department of Defense and the Department 
of Transportation on the Use of U.S. Coast 
Guard Capabilities and Resources in Support 
of the National Military Strategy, which was 
signed on 3 October 1995.This agreement 
assigns the Coast Guard five specific 


national defense missions in addition to 
our general defense operations and polar 
icebreaking duties—maritime interception 
operations: military environmental 
response operations; port operations, secu¬ 
rity, and defense: peacetime military 
engagement; and coastal sea control opera¬ 
tions—thus highlighting our role as a spe¬ 
cialized military force. 

However, the specialized capabilities 
that allow us to augment the U.S. Navy’s 
efforts also distinguish us from that service. 
The purpose of the Navy is set forth in 
Title 10 of the U.S. Code: “The Navy shall 
be organized, trained, and equipped primarily 
for prompt and sustained combat incident 
to operations at sea. It is responsible for 
the preparation of Naval forces necessary 
for the effective prosecution of war except 
as otherwise assigned.”''^ The Navy is not 
equipped, structured, or legally empowered 
to deal with the nontraditional threats we 
routinely handle. Unlike the Coast Guard, 
the Navy is constrained by the Posse 
Comitatus doctrine, which prevents the 
other military services from acting as law 
enforcement agents on U.S. soil or in U.S. 
territorial waters."*® By the same token, the 



The high-endurance cutter Midgett (WHEC 726) sails alongside 
the Constellation (CV 64) while deployed to the Arabian Gulf in 
1999 to enforce the United Nations sanctions on Iraq. 


A 


39 








Chapter Three 


Coast Guard is not organized, trained, and 
equipped to engage in the full spectrum of 
naval operations. Hence, far from being 
redundant, the Coast Guard and Navy 
instead provide resources that mutually 
support and complement each other’s roles 
and missions in order to meet the entire 
spectrum of America’s maritime needs. The 
accompanying graphic vividly portrays the 
relationship between the two services. 

Nevertheless, because the Coast Guard 
is a military service, our cutters are desig¬ 


nated warships of the United States. This 
designation affords our cutters certain 
rights under international conventions and 
practice, such as the right to approach any 
vessel to ascertain its identity and country 
of origin. It gives our vessels sovereign 
immunity vis-a-vis other countries’ laws. 
And it allows our government to assert 
principles of national sovereignty, such as 
freedom of navigation, with vessels viewed 
as less threatening than U.S. Navy ships 
and thus as a more acceptable presence. 






O I o 

Q ^ 


III 

U 0) 


II 


_Q 3 2 


(J UJ o 


l! 


Increasing Level of Conflict 












Chapter Three 


Signalman First Class 
Douglas A. Munro 

Congressional Medal of Honor Citation 

“For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry in action above and beyond the call of duty as 
Officer-in-Charge of a group of Higgins boats, engaged in the evacuation of a Battalion of Marines 
trapped by enemy Japanese forces at Point Cruz, Guadalcanal, on September 27, 1942. After making 
preliminary plans for the evacuation of nearly 500 beleaguered Marines, Munro, under constant risk of 
his life, daringly led five of his small craft toward the shore. As he closed the beach, he signalled [sic] 
the others to land, and then in order to draw the enemy’s fire and protect the heavily loaded boats, he 
valiantly placed his craft with its two small guns as a shield between the beachhead and the Japanese. 
When the perilous task of evacuation was nearly completed, Munro was killed by enemy fire, but his 
crew, two of whom were wounded, carried on until the last boat had loaded and cleared the beach. By 
his outstanding leadership, expert planning, and dauntless devotion to duty, he and his courageous 
comrades undoubtedly saved the lives of many who otherwise would have perished. He gallantly gave 
up his life in defense of his country.” 



Signalman First Class Douglas A. Munro (manning the machine gun in the foreground) interposes his boat between 
Japanese forces and the Marines being evacuated from Guadalcanal in 1942. After successfully recovering the Marines, 
Munro was killed by Japanese fire. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. 




41 





















Chapter Three 


Captain Quentin R. Walsh 

Lieutenant Commander (later Captain) Quentin R. Walsh was a member 
of the Logistics and Planning Section, U.S. Naval Forces in Europe during 
World War II. He planned the occupation of the port of Cherbourg, France, 
which was viewed as vital to the invading allied forces and their resupply 
effort. 

Lieutenant Commander Walsh’s plan called for the formation of a spe¬ 
cially trained naval reconnaissance unit to determine the condition of the 
port after its capture. While leading the 53-man special mission to the port 
of Cherbourg, he and his men met up with the U.S. 79th Infantry Division 
and joined them in fierce house-to-house fighting against the Germans. 

The Allied forces quickly captured the eastern part of the port, while most 
of the Germans retreated to the western section of the city. 

Lieutenant Commander Walsh personally led a 1 6-member unit of his 
special task force on a raid to an arsenal area and adjacent waterfront on the western side of the city. 
Armed with bazookas, hand grenades, rifles, and submachine guns, he and his party overcame sniper fire 
to capture underground bunkers and approximately 400 Germans in the arsenal area. Lieutenant Commander 
Walsh’s command went on to capture Fort Du Hornet and its garrison of 350 men. Upon entering the fort, he 
convinced the Germans that the city had already fallen. He then accepted the surrender of 300 German 
troops and liberated 50 American paratroopers who had been prisoners since D-Day. Lieutenant Commander 
Walsh received the Navy Cross for his heroic actions. 



Captain Quentin R. Walsh 


Multi-Mission 

We fulfill our five roles by accomplishing 
our various missions, with most missions 
supporting more than one role. This multi¬ 
functional capability is an enduring Coast 
Guard quality, and our ability to field ver¬ 
satile platforms and develop multi-talented 
Coast Guard men and women is perhaps 
our most important core competency. In 
short, we uphold all of America’s maritime 
interests, including national defense. 

We are the nation’s at-sea law enforce¬ 
ment arm with the broad authority of 
Section 89 of Title 49 of the U.S. Code. 
Evolving over the years, our reach extends 
to illegal migrant interdiction, drug interdic¬ 
tion, and fisheries protection. Classically, 
our versatile deepwater platforms stand 
the watch with a ready flight deck, a boat 
at the rail, and a trained boarding party 
always prepared to enforce domestic law. 


observe international standards, and preserve 
individual human rights. With a background 
in these roles and missions, the Coast 
Guard stands watch to ensure homeland 
security at our ports and maritime borders. 

The Coast Guard’s buoy tender fleet 
presents a classic example of our multi¬ 
mission nature. In addition to setting 
buoys for the safe navigation of mariners, 
these cutters deploy oil containment booms 
to protect the environment, break ice for 
domestic maritime traffic, conduct naval 
warfare duties, and perform search and 
rescue and law enforcement missions. 

Our Marine Safety Offices (MSOs) 
are likewise multi-mission capable. MSO 
personnel examine vessels and facilities for 
compliance with safety and environmental 
laws. They enforce pollution prevention 
statutes and respond to discharges of oil 













Chapter Three 


and refuse into our navigable waters. They 
supervise and control vessel movement in 
America’s ports and waterways. And, they 
restrict access to vessels and facilities when 
necessary for national security purposes. 

Maritime 

The maritime region is the Coast 
Guard’s domain. We are the only service 
that combines law enforcement and mili¬ 
tary capabilities in a single organization 
focused on operations and missions in 
the maritime environment. We provide 
maritime expertise across numerous mis¬ 
sion areas and maintain a meaningful, 
credible federal presence in American and 
international waters, while also contribut¬ 
ing to overall U.S. engagement overseas. 

Given America’s historic and continu¬ 
ing dependence on the sea, the formation 
of a force focused on maritime tasks 
beyond those that are strictly military was 
inevitable. While foreign trade fluctuates as 
a percentage of America’s gross national 
product, it has always played a key role in 
the nation’s economic health. Whether trans¬ 
porting dry bulk cargo, petroleum prod¬ 
ucts, ferry passengers, or containerized 
cargo, ships will continue to provide a 
cost-effective method of transportation, 
and their safe and efficient movement has 
been an important consideration for the 
United States. Likewise, fish and fishing 
fleets have been important to the American 
diet and economy, and as the nation has 
grown wealthier, cruise ships, floating 
casinos, and recreational boats have joined 
traditional commercial users of U.S. domes¬ 
tic waterways in ever-greater numbers. 



The cutter Ironwood (WLB 297) and an HH-60J offload equipment for 
maintenance on Eldred Rock Lighthouse, Lynn Canal, Alaska. 


Everything we do—from drug interdic¬ 
tion, fisheries enforcement, and alien 
migrant interdiction, to pollution response, 
commercial vessel inspections, and search 
and rescue—has a maritime connection. 

A HUMANITARIAN REPUTATION 

The Coast Guard is renowned throughout 
the world as “America’s Lifesavers.” The 
same military discipline that serves the 
Coast Guard well in war, serves it well in 
peace. Nowhere is it more apparent than 
in the prosecution of search and rescue 
cases. Our reputation is based on personal 
courage and selflessness that goes back 
to the earliest days of the disparate Life- 
Saving, Lighthouse, and Revenue Cutter 
Services. Our history is replete with heroes 
such as Joshua James, Ida Lewis, Captain 
Josiah Sturgis, the Pea Island station crew, 
and countless others who repeatedly risked 
their lives to save mariners in distress. 
Nothing fills us with greater pride than the 
stories of harrowing rescues where profes¬ 
sional Coast Guard men and women return 
would-be victims safely to their families 


A 


43 

















Chapter Three 


against all odds. It is not by accident that 
those stories conclude successfully. Rather, 
it is because the preparation for the 
moment—born of good training and good 
equipment blended with courage, discipline, 
and selflessness—is our hallmark as an 
organization. 

Our humanitarian reputation, however, 
goes beyond our search and rescue mission. 


Whether responding to an oil spill, rescuing 
people from flood waters, ensuring safe 
marine transportation, performing peacetime 
engagement visits in foreign countries, or 
working with international organizations to 
improve the safety of commercial shipping, 
our Service reflects a commitment to serving 
others on a daily basis. Such service adds 
a distinctive humanitarian dimension to 
our character and helps define who we are. 



A crewmember from a ship run aground is rescued via breeches 
buoy during a violent storm. 



Coast Guard boarding team members complete a rescue at sea 
while conducting interdiction operations off the coast of Haiti. 





















Chapter Three 


Captain Richard Etheridge 
and the Pea Island Life-Saving Crew 

On 24 January 1880, Captain Richard 
Etheridge became the first African-American to 
command a U.S. Life-Saving Station when the 
Service appointed him as the Keeper of the Pea 
Island Life-Saving Station, near Cape Fear, North 
Carolina. Soon after Etheridge’s appointment, 
he supervised the construction of a new station 
and developed rigorous lifesaving drills that 
enabled his crew to hone their skills. The Pea 
Island Station quickly earned the reputation as 
"one of the tautest on the Carolina Coast," with 
Etheridge known as one of the most coura¬ 
geous and ingenious lifesavers in the Service. 

On 1 I October 1896, Etheridge’s rigorous 
training drills proved to be invaluable. The 
three-masted schooner, E.S. Newman, was 
caught in a hurricane while en route from 
Providence, Rhode Island, to Norfolk, Virginia. 
The ship lost all sails and was blown 100 miles 
south off course before it ran aground near Pea 
Island. 

Etheridge and his crew quickly swung into action, hitching mules to the beach cart and hurrying 
toward the vessel. Arriving on scene, they found 

the vessel’s captain and eight others clinging to the wreckage. High water prevented them from firing a 
line to the schooner with a Lyle gun, so Etheridge directed two surfmen to bind themselves together 
with a line. Grasping a second line, the pair fought through the breakers while the remaining surfmen 
secured the other end on shore. The two surfmen reached the wreck and, using a heaving stick, got the 
line on board. Once a line was tied around one of the crewmen, all three were then pulled back through 
the surf by the crew on the beach. After each trip two different surfmen replaced those who had Just 
returned. The seemingly inexhaustible Pea Island livesavers Journeyed through the perilous waters a 
total often times, rescuing the entire crew of the E.S. Newman. 

For their efforts, the all-African-American crew of the Pea Island Life-Saving Station—Richard 
Etheridge, Benjamin Bowser, Dorman Pugh, Theodore Meekins, Lewis Wescott, Stanley Wise, and 
William Irving—were awarded the Cold Lifesaving Medal on 5 March 1996. Richard Etheridge died 
while in service on 8 May 1900. 



The Pea Island Life-Saving Station crew: (left to right) 
Richard Etheridge, Benjamin Bowser, Dorman Pugh, 
Theodore Meekins, Lewis Wescott, Stanley Wise, 
and William Irving. 


A 


45 













Chapter Three 


Aviation Survivalman First Class 
Michael G. Odom 

On the night of 23 January 1 995, the sailing vessel Mirage found 
itself battling 25-foot seas 300 miles east of Savannah, Georgia. After it 
began taking on water, the Mirage sent a distress call to Croup Hampton 
Roads, Virginia. In response, an HH-60J helicopter and an HC-1 30 aircraft 
took off from Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, to assess the 
unfolding emergency situation. Serving as the rescue swimmer aboard 
the HH-60j was Petty Officer Michael C. Odom. 

Arriving on scene, the aircrew encountered 40-mile-per-hour winds 
and 25-foot seas battering the Mirage. While discussing the best course 
of action for the rescue, a crewmember from the M/rage Jumped off the 
back of the vessel. Petty Officer Odom voluntarily entered the cold, tur¬ 
bulent ocean to rescue the crewmember. After being lowered into the 
water. Petty Officer Odom fought heavy breakers in the dark to reach the 
crewmember and to ensure he was hoisted to safety. This evolution was 
repeated two more times. However, during the rescue of the third Mirage crewmember, the hoist cable 
jammed. While the crew of the HH-60J was able to safely bring the last Mirage crewmember aboard. 

Petty Officer Odom had to be left behind. 

Fatigued, he dragged himself into a small, six-man life raft provided by the helicopter. He was finally 
rescued five hours later, after having been repeatedly swept from his life raft. At the time of his rescue. 
Petty Officer Odom was unconscious, suffering from hypothermia, and near death. He was flown to a 
nearby U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser, Ticonderoga (CC 47), where he recovered. While Petty Officer 
Odom’s commitment to helping people in distress almost cost him his life, his unwavering courage saved 
the lives of the crewmembers from the Mirage and exemplifies the Coast Guard’s core value of devotion 
to duty. 


Chief Boatswain’s Mate 
Joseph A. Habel 

On 25 January 2000, the 1 1 0-foot tugboat Bay King, with its four- 
person crew, found itself being pummeled by snow, sleet, and 50-mile- 
per-hour winds, and in danger of capsizing in over ten-foot seas and 
near-zero visibility conditions. Coast Guard Station Cape Charles, 

Virginia, received the mayday call from the crew of the Bay King, but 
the seas and winds exceeded the operating limits of the station’s 41-foot 
utility boat. These same conditions prevented any other help from reaching 
the foundering tugboat. Chief Boatswain’s Mate Joseph A. Habel knew 
that if his crew did not respond quickly, the four crewmembers of the 
Bay King would perish in the 38-degree waters of the Chesapeake Bay. 

After coordinating with the Croup Commander and evaluating the 
risks associated with the rescue attempt. Chief Habel and the duty boat 
crew volunteered to attempt the dangerous rescue. Chief Habel safely 
navigated the 41-foot utility boat over six miles to the Bay King, but, 
once on scene, the high sea state prevented a direct transfer from the tug. After reevaluating the situa¬ 
tion, Chief Habel convinced the crewmembers of the Bay King to jump into the frigid waters. 

All four crewmembers were safely pulled from the water in less than two minutes, and Chief Habel 
then safely navigated the utility boat back to port. Chief Habel’s decisive actions, realistic assessment of 
the capability of his boat and crew, and superior seamanship skills saved the lives of the four crewmem¬ 
bers of the tugboat Bay King. 



Chief Boatswain's Mate 
Joseph A. Habel 



Aviation Survivalman First Class 
Michael G. Odom 














Chapter Three 


A UNIQUE SERVICE 

Taken together, the Coast Guard’s com¬ 
bination of military status, law enforcement 
authority, and humanitarian reputation gives 
us a range of access unique among the 
Armed Forces of the United States. In our 
law enforcement role, this authority includes 
enforcing all federal laws on, under, and 
over the high seas and waters subject to 
the jurisdiction of the United States. 

As both a law enforcement agency and 
an armed service, we embrace a broader 
concept of national security that extends 
beyond our national defense missions and 
provides the nation a maritime resource 
with capabilities not duplicated elsewhere 
in the government. All Coast Guard roles— 
whether rescuing distressed mariners, 
interdicting drug smugglers, combating 
major oil spills, or conducting naval war¬ 
fare missions in support of the unified 
Commanders-in-Chief—contribute directly 
to the economic, environmental, and physical 
security of the United States. 

Because of this unique character, U.S. 
Presidents have often found the Coast 
Guard to be the most readily available and 
useful instrument for responding to national 
emergencies or enforcing national policy. 

In addition, we “speak the language” of 
both civil and military organizations and 
can play an important bridging role by 
coordinating the actions of U.S. and foreign 
civilian agencies and military forces in the 
maritime arena. 

Our status as a military force with 
many civilian duties and responsibilities 
was closely reviewed at the time the Life- 


Saving Service and Revenue Cutter Service 
were merged to become the U.S. Coast 
Guard in 1915. Captain-Commandant 
Ellsworth Price Bertholf—the last 
Commandant of the Revenue Cutter Service 
and the first Commandant of the newly 
formed U.S. Coast Guard—forthrightly 
discussed the nature of the newly created 
Service in his first annual report to Congress: 

The Coast Guard occupies a pecu¬ 
liar position among other branches 
of the Government, and necessarily 
so from the dual character of its 
work, which is both civil and mili¬ 
tary. Its organization, therefore, 
must be such as will best adapt it to 
the performance of both classes of 
duties, and as a civil organization 
would not suffice for the perform¬ 
ance of military functions, the 
organization of the service must be 
and is by law military. More than 
120 years of practical experience 
has demonstrated that it is by 
means of military drills, training, 
and discipline that the service is 
enabled to maintain that state of 
preparedness for the prompt per¬ 
formance of its most important civil 
duties, which ... are largely of an 
emergent nature.'*® 

Captain-Commandant Bertholf’s state¬ 
ment is no less true today than it was in 
1915. Coast Guard men and women perform 
well because they prepare well. In the final 
analysis, the Coast Guard’s legal historical 
core is as a military service, originated with 
unique law enforcement authority and leav¬ 
ened with a well-earned reputation for 
humanitarian service. These purposeful 
attributes enable us to meet a broad multi¬ 
mission mandate from our nation. Our core 
values of honor, respect, and devotion to 


47 






Chapter Three 


duty enable that mandate to be fulfilled. proud to be warriors and protectors at 
As America’s Maritime Guardian, we are all times. 

Lieutenant Colleen A. Cain 

Lieutenant Colleen A. Cain became the Service’s third female 
aviator and the first female helicopter pilot in June 1 979. In her 
brief career, Cain flew many rescue missions and completed her 
qualifications as Co-pilot, First Pilot, and Aircraft Commander. In 
1980, she received the Coast Guard Achievement Medal for 
saving a three-year-old boy involved in a boating accident. 

In the early morning hours of 7 January 1 982, while sta¬ 
tioned at Air Station Barbers Point, Hawaii, Cain took flight in 
severe weather, heavy winds, and limited visibility in response 
to a distress call from a sinking fishing vessel with seven per¬ 
sons on board. While en route to the sinking vessel, the HH- 
52A helicopter she was co-piloting crashed into the side of a 
mountain in the Wailua Valley of Molokai, Hawaii, killing Cain 
and her two crewmembers, Commander Buzz Johnson and 
Aviation Survivalman David Thompson. Cain became the first 
female Coast Guard member killed in the line of duty. A Coast 
Guard officer wrote of Cain’s reputation among her peers: 
"Without fail, they regarded her as an exemplary Coast Guard 
officer, patriot, and human being." 

Lieutenant Cain and her fellow crewmembers made the 
ultimate sacrifice in service to their nation and fellow countrymen, striving to protect life at sea. On 25 
October 1985, the Coast Guard dedicated Cain Hall, a 100-room residence hall at Reserve Training Center 
Yorktown, Virginia, to her memory. 



L 


48 
















Chapter Four 


Chapter Four: Principles of Coast Guard Operations 


Our effectiveness as a military, multi¬ 
mission, and maritime service depends in 
no small part on a set of key ideas about 
the way we operate. These principles have 
emerged over time and have become part 
of our unwritten Service culture. They 
describe our operating style and underpin 
our ability to operate successfully, both 
domestically and internationally. 

As members 
of an armed 
service. Coast 
Guard men and 
women should 
be familiar with 
the principles 
of war as well 
as the principles 
of military opera¬ 
tions other than 
war, which are 
presented in Appendix B and Appendix C, 
respectively. However, the Coast Guard has 
adopted an additional set of operating prin¬ 
ciples that reflect both the civil and military 
elements of our roles and missions. These 
principles modify and extend the principles 
of war and military operations other than 
war to encompass the distinctions between 
war fighting and civil law enforcement 
and regulation. 

The principles of Coast Guard operations 
discussed below apply across the range of 
Service roles and missions. There will be 


times, during engagements with clearly 
hostile forces, for instance, when the 
importance of some of these principles will 
decrease. Nevertheless, these principles 
underpin our actions in the vast majority 
of situations we encounter on a day-to-day 
basis. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF CLEAR 
OBJECTIVE 

Direct every operation toward a clearly 
defined and attainable objective. The most 
significant action a leader can take in plan¬ 
ning and executing an operation is to clearly 
express the overarching objective to subor¬ 
dinates. This principle holds whether the 
objective is one that has been defined by 
our national leaders or by the commander 
on scene at an oil spill or any other opera¬ 
tion. Once the objective has been defined, 
we must focus our operations and efforts 
to achieve it. 

Some operations are short lived, and 
the objectives are easily understood. Rescue 
the people. Prevent the spill. Clean up the 
spill. Seize the drugs. Other operations are 
of a long-term nature, and the objectives 
may not be as easily defined. For example, 
the primary focus of a cutter on patrol may 
be fisheries law enforcement. Yet, like a 
police officer on a beat, a cutter on patrol 
is also alert and prepared to perform all 
other Coast Guard missions. Regardless, 
leaders must be able to articulate the central 
objective of the mission at hand. 


Principles of Coast 
Guard Operations 

♦ Clear Objective 

♦ Effective Presence 

♦ Unity of Effort 

♦ On-Scene Initiative 

♦ Flexibility 

♦ Managed Risk 

♦ Restraint 


49 


A 






Chapter Four 


THE PRINCIPLE OF EFFECTIVE 
PRESENCE 

At the most basic level, effective pres¬ 
ence means having the right assets and 
capabilities at the right place at the right 
time. This principle traces its origins to the 
earliest days of the Revenue Marine. The 
first revenue cutters were designed specifi¬ 
cally for effectiveness in their designated 
operating areas—rivers, harbors, and their 
approaches—and they were assigned to the 
most strategically important ports. The 
first Revenue Marine officers came from 
the ranks of the colonial merchant fleet, 
former privateers, and the former state 
and Continental navies. They were selected 
because they understood their operating 
areas and their adversaries’ methods. This 
put the “right assets” in place. 

Revenue Marine founder Alexander 
Hamilton explained another aspect of the 
concept of effective presence in a Letter 
of Instruction to his officers in 1791: 


An HC-130 Hercules long-range surveillance aircraft on patrol off the 
Florida coast. 


Il]t will be necessary for you from 
time to time to ply along the coasts 
in the neighborhood of your sta¬ 
tion, and to traverse the different 
parts of the waters which it com¬ 
prehends. To fix yourself constant¬ 
ly or even generally at one posi¬ 
tion, would in a great measure 
defeat the purpose of the establish¬ 
ment. It would confine your vigi¬ 
lance to a particular spot, and allow 
full scope to fraudulent practices, 
everywhere else."*® 


Hamilton was saying that to be effective, 
units must be active, because the “right 
place to be” changes over time. This is 
reflected in the assignment of units to 
different operating areas depending on the 
anticipated need. Once assigned, cutters 
and aircraft need to patrol operating areas, 
small boats need to cruise local waterways, 
and marine safety personnel need to patrol 
the port. To be effective we must be vigilant 
and ready to respond to situations as they 
arise, keeping in mind all of our principles 
of operations. 


Ensuring an effective presence also 
requires careful attention to the ability to 
sustain our assets during normal operations. 
We should operate our assets to the level— 
and only to the level—that the logistics 
system (i.e., people, parts and equipment, 
and funding) can sustain. If we can achieve 
near-term performance only by operating 
our assets beyond the level of long-term 
sustainability, we risk harming the national 
interests by degrading our ability to respond 
effectively in the future. 



z 


Mil 








Chapter Four 



A key component of effective presence 
is acceptable presence, which refers to the 
reality that foreign governments and non¬ 
state actors oftentimes regard Coast Guard 
forces as less threatening or objectionable 
than those of the other U.S. armed services, 
This is a powerful discriminator of the Coast 
Guard from the Department of Defense 
armed services. Due to the unique combi¬ 
nation of military status, law enforcement 
authority, and humanitarian reputation, 
the Coast Guard offers the U.S. National 
Command Authorities a unique option 
with which to pursue national strategy and 
enforce national policy. Indeed, in many 
civil and military arenas worldwide, the 
Coast Guard is ideally suited to cooperate 
with and provide assistance to foreign 
governments, navies, and coast guards; 
international organizations; and domestic 
and international non-governmental organi¬ 
zations on a broad spectrum of defense- and 
maritime-related issues. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY OF 
EFFORT 

Most Coast Guard operations are per¬ 
formed by cooperative effort among a num¬ 
ber of different units, or by the Coast Guard 
working in concert with and coordinating 
the efforts of a diverse set of governmental 
and non-governmental entities, to achieve 
the operational objective. Success in either 
case requires positive leadership to ensure 
clear understanding of the objective and 
the role each individual, unit, or organiza¬ 
tion is expected to play in meeting that 
objective. 

The concept known as the “chain of com¬ 
mand” is an essential element to achieving 
internal unity of effort. Chain of command 
recognizes the principle that every person— 
and every unit—in a military organization 
reports to someone higher up. In a given 
operation, there can be only one responsible 


The high- 
endurance cutter 
Gallatin (WHEC 
721) operates with 
a proof-of-concept 
MH-90 Enforcer 
helicopter and an 
Over-the-Horizon 
Rigid Hull 
Inflatable Boat 
(OTH RHIB), both 
of which were 
specifically 
designed to 
engage “go-fast" 
drug smuggling 
boats. 














Chapter Four 


commander. The timely and accurate flow 
of information to and from the responsible 
commander via the chain of command is 
essential for ensuring the necessary 
resources, including information, get to the 
right place at the right time. Maintaining an 
effective and efficient chain of command 
requires constant attention, since we have 
multi-mission field units under higher eche¬ 
lon commanders whose staffs are organized 
along mission or other specialty lines. This 
calls for staff coordination. Respect for the 
chain of command, especially when coupled 
with proper staff coordination, contributes 
significantly to internal unity of effort. 

Unity among organizations is the external 
counterpart to internal unity of effort. This 
external leadership challenge is in many 
respects the more demanding, because 
the external entities we deal with generally 
are not under the Coast Guard’s authority 
and discerning those organizations’ lines 
of authority may be problematic. Further, 
the Coast Guard frequently has to decide 
between the conflicting and divergent 
demands of various stakeholders, each of 
whom represents legitimate and worthy 
public or private interests. The Coast Guard 
does not have the final authority in all situ¬ 
ations and when necessary refers decisions 
to the appropriate level. Nevertheless, the 
responsibilities and authorities given the 
Coast Guard by Congress, and the tendency 
of Congresses and Presidents to turn to the 
Coast Guard whenever difficult maritime 
issues arise, are testimonies to our history 
of providing effective leadership across 
diverse and competing interests. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF ON-SCENE 
INITIATIVE 

The nature of our operations demands 
that Coast Guard men and women be given 
latitude to act quickly and decisively within 
the scope of their authority, without waiting 
for direction from higher levels in the chain 
of command. Personal initiative has always 
been crucial to the success of our Service. 
Tight control from above was never really 
an option for the Revenue Marine, whose 
original ten cutters were based from 
Portsmouth, New Flampshire, to Savannah, 
Georgia; or for the nineteenth-century Life- 
Saving Service, which relied on 148 remote 
stations along the U.S. coast.Since then, 
advances in technology have revolutionized 
our commanders’ ability to communicate 
with and even control units in the field. But 
the concept of allowing the person on 
scene to take the initiative—guided by a 
firm understanding of the desired tactical 
objectives and the national interests at 
stake—remains central to the Coast Guard’s 
view of its command relationships. 

Many of our operations—responding 
to oil spills, searching for and rescuing 
mariners in distress, or interdicting smug¬ 
glers, for instance—are of an emergent, 
unpredictable nature. History has shown 
that situations like these are best handled 
locally. Thus, we push both authority and 
responsibility to the lowest possible level. 
Our ethos is that the person on scene can 
be depended upon to assess the situation, 
seize the initiative, and take the action 
necessary for success. 









Chapter Four 



An HH-65A Dolphin helicopter operating with an Island-dass 
patrol boat. 


This style of operational command is 
based upon the trust senior commanders 
place in their subordinates’ judgment. 
Decisive action requires unity of effort— 
getting all parts of a force to work together. 
Rapid action, on the other hand, requires 
a large degree of decentralization, giving 
those closest to the problem the freedom 
to solve it. To reconcile these seemingly 
contradictory requirements, we use tools 
called the “commander’s intent” and 
“concept of operations.” 

The commander’s intent conveys the 
objective and the desired course of action. 
The concept of operations details the 


commander’s estimated sequence of actions 
to achieve the objective and contains 
essential elements of a plan—i.e., what is to 
be done and how the commander plans to 
do it. A significant change in the situation 
that requires action will alter the concept 
of operations, but the commander’s intent 
is overarching and usually remains 
unchanged. 

Effective commanders at all levels 
neither expect nor attempt to control their 
subordinates’ every action. Instead, they 
ensure their subordinates thoroughly 
understand their expectations and how 
to meet those expectations in a variety 
of situations. Great commanders in naval 
history rarely issued detailed instructions 
to their subordinate commanders. Instead, 
they frequently gathered their captains 
to discuss a variety of tactical problems. 
Through these informal discussions, the 
captains became aware of what their com¬ 
manders expected to accomplish and how 
they planned, in various situations, to 
accomplish it. Thus prepared, they later 
were able to act independently, following 
their commanders’ intent even though 
formal orders were brief or nonexistent. 

Good decisions are made in unpre¬ 
dictable situations when Coast Guard 
personnel on the scene of an emergency 
or a crisis are rigorously trained to act as 
part of a cohesive, cooperative team. It 
works through the common understanding 
of how individual incidents or situations 
are normally handled. This shared under¬ 
standing lies at the heart of effective 
decentralized command and control. 


53 














Chapter Four 


THE PRINCIPLE OF FLEXIBILITY 



The revenue cutter Bear, veteran of 34 cruises to Alaskan 
waters during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

This principle is the operational corol¬ 
lary to our multi-mission character. Arising 
from a combination of broad authority, 
diverse responsibilities, and limited 
resources, the principle means that if we 
are to succeed in pursuing multiple missions 
with the same people and assets, we must 
be able to adjust to a wide variety of tasks 
and circumstances. 

As is true of our other principles of 
operations, the principle of flexibility has 
its roots in our early history. During their 
operations in Alaska during the nineteenth 
century, for example, the crew of the revenue 
cutter Bear conducted an incredible variety 
of tasks, including the transporting of rein¬ 
deer and undertaking long, arduous rescue 
missions through the territory’s interior. 
Many of these tasks went well beyond 


Origin of 
Semper Paratus 

The exact origin of our motto —“Semper 
Paratus "—has never been determined. The earliest 
recorded use of the phrase semper paratus in 
regards to the Service was in the New Orleans 
newspaper, Bee, in January 1836, which used the 
phrase in an article praising the revenue cutter 
Ingham. The motto appears to have been adopted 
sometime between October 1896 and May 1897, 
when a new seal containing the phrase appeared 
on a general order of the Division of Revenue 
Cutter Service on 21 May 1 897. 

Information obtained from the Coast Guard 
Historian’s Office and an unpublished document 
by William R. Wells, II, “SEMPER PARATUS'—The 
Perception of a Motto, 1 7 November 1 991. 


anything they could have imagined from 
their original orders. Thanks to their 
training, experience, and can-do attitude, 
the crew was able to adapt their operations 
to the needs of the people they served. 

This notion of flexibility also is deeply 
embedded in our heritage of semper para¬ 
tus. We built our reputation for being 
“always ready” to meet just about any mar¬ 
itime challenge by successfully and repeat¬ 
edly adapting to the situation at hand. 
Thus, a cutter on fisheries patrol is as 
prepared to divert to a search and rescue 
operation, respond to a pollution incident, 
or intercept a suspected drug smuggler—in 
many cases across thousands of nautical 
miles of open ocean—as it is to enforce our 
fisheries laws. 

Our units also frequently find them¬ 
selves facing competing mission priorities 
as incidents unfold. Two examples illus¬ 
trate the point. A cruise ship on fire and 
drifting toward the rocks is both a search- 
and-rescue case and potential pollution 

















Chapter Four 


incident. Similarly, an overloaded boat 
filled with migrants intent on reaching 
our shores is both a law enforcement and 
potential search-and-rescue case. In each 
instance, responding units must adapt to 
the circumstances as they unfold, giving 
priority to the mission most critical at the 
moment. And, since at least the late nine¬ 
teenth century, the mission of aiding dis¬ 
tressed mariners usually has trumped all 
other priorities. 

The most demanding circumstances 
today require the Coast Guard to conduct 
“surge operations”—high-intensity efforts 
usually launched at short notice in response 
to an emergency situation. Recent examples 
of events requiring surge operations include 
the Exxon Valdez oil spill response in 1989 
and the mass migrations from Haiti and 
Cuba that occurred in 1992 and 1994. 
Surge operations require the Coast Guard 
to reallocate large numbers of people, 
assets, and money to respond to the situa¬ 
tion. This affects not only the people and 
units directly involved, it demands that the 
entire Service adapt to find the resources 
to meet the needs of the surge operation 
while still continuing critical day-to-day 
operations. Upon completion of the surge 
operation, the Coast Guard then must 
transition back to normal operations. Surge 
operations are very demanding, but our 
ability to transition to and from these 
operations provides an enormous benefit 
to the nation and serves as a testament to 
our flexibility. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF MANAGED RISK 

Just as the unity of effort principle has 
internal and external dimensions, so too 


the principle of managed risk operates at 
two levels. The internal aspect of this prin¬ 
ciple involves the commander’s obligations 
to ensure the unit is properly trained, 
equipped, and maintained for the mission 
and to carefully assess crew and equipment 
capabilities against the operational scenario 
when assessing whether and how to exe¬ 
cute a given mission. 



A 47-foot motor lifeboat trains in waters off the coast of Station Cape 
Disappointment, Washington. 


We do dangerous work in hostile envi¬ 
ronments. Our heritage is based in large 
part on the selfless acts of courageous men 
and women who used their tools and their 
wits under dangerous conditions to save 
the lives of others. This tradition continues 
today, as we perform duties that routinely 
place us in harm’s way. Without a continu¬ 
ing and observable commitment to the 
safety of our forces we unnecessarily 
endanger our people and jeopardize the 
mission. 

Successful mission execution begins 
with a thorough understanding of the 


A 


55 










Chapter Four 


environment in which we operate. Based on 
that understanding, we develop operational 
concepts, acquire appropriate equipment, 
and put our people through rigorous formal 
training. We build on that foundation by 
continuous training and drills, by improving 
our personal skills and by maintaining our 
equipment at the highest state of readiness. 
In short, consistently successful performance 
requires thorough preparation. 

Preparation alone, however, is not 
enough. Success also requires that our 
people and equipment be used within the 
limits of their abilities. No small boat or 
aircraft, no matter how well maintained 
or skillfully piloted, can be expected to 
survive, much less execute a mission, 
when wind and sea conditions are beyond 
the strength of hull, airframe, or the human 
body. Responsible commanders evaluate 
the capability of crew and equipment against 
the conditions likely to be encountered 
when deciding on the proper course of 
action. Conscious attention to time-tested 
and time-honored principles of safe opera¬ 
tion is a necessity. 

Today’s Coast Guard standard of 
response remains true to its rich legacy. 

We honor our heritage daily by casting 
off all lines or lifting off in severe weather 
to save lives and property in peril, accepting 
the risk that we may not come back. We 
honor our heritage as well by attending 
to the principle that a proper and practiced 
understanding of duties, a thorough evalua¬ 
tion of the risks involved in an operation, 
and the exercise of good judgment in 
executing that operation is of paramount 
importance for success. 


The idea of managing risks is not limited 
to Coast Guard response operations. In 
fact, risk management through prevention 
(to reduce the probability of an adverse 
event) and response (to minimize conse¬ 
quences when an adverse event does occur) 
has long been a fundamental aspect of 
Coast Guard operations. Prevention 
includes such measures as placing aids to 
navigation in shipping channels; ensuring 
that commercial vessels are properly 
designed, built and maintained; and provid¬ 
ing courtesy marine exams and safety edu¬ 
cation for recreational boaters. Prevention 
will never be perfect, however, so we main¬ 
tain the ability to respond aggressively and 
capably, whether in a search and rescue 
situation or following an oil spill. We also 
use these same prevention and response 
concepts internally. We acquire rugged ships, 
boats, and aircraft and train our crews with 
prevention in mind. We also monitor 
unfolding operations and have back-up 
plans in place, ready to minimize negative 
consequences when the unwanted does 
occur. 

Finally, prevention and response activi¬ 
ties, while focused on different aspects of 
the same problem, are inextricably linked. 
Neither is superior to the other and neither 
is adequate by itself. More importantly, the 
Coast Guard’s overall effectiveness depends 
on the synergy between these two very 
different means of achieving success: our 
operational strengths in the response arena 
make us more effective in the prevention 
arena, and vice versa. Prevention and 
response are both essential tools for Coast 
Guard success. 








Chapter Four 


THE PRINCIPLE OF RESTRAINT 

Coast Guard personnel have always 
been under a special obligation to exercise 
their powers prudently and with restraint. 
Title 14 of the U.S. Code, Section 89, confers 
on Coast Guard personnel an unparalleled 
level of law enforcement authority. 
Consequently, the portion of Treasury 
Secretary Hamilton’s Letter of Instruction to 
Revenue Cutter officers, explaining the 
need for restraint and the standard to be 
met, remains as true today as it was in 
1791: 

[A]lways keep in mind that [your] 
countrymen are free men and, as 
such, are impatient of everything 
that bears the least mark of a domi¬ 
neering spirit.... [Refrain, there¬ 
fore,] with the most guarded cir¬ 
cumspection, from whatever has 
the semblance of haughtiness, 
rudeness, or insult.... [E]ndeavor to 
overcome difficulties, if any are 
experienced, by a cool and temper¬ 
ate perseverance in [your] duty—by 
address and moderation, rather 
than vehemence and violence.^' 

The Coast Guard has a legacy of public 
service that has shaped our tradition of 
restraint and good judgment. The Life-Saving 
Service rescued distressed mariners. The 
Steamboat Inspection Service protected 
ships’ crews, passengers, and cargo. The 
Lighthouse Service had similar humanitarian 
commitments. The Revenue Marine cruised 
offshore in winter to aid mariners. Today, 
we do all this and more. Even our regulatory 
and law enforcement missions contribute 
to the safety and well being of the 
American public. A lack of restraint in Coast 
Guard operations, then, would be inconsistent 


with one of the fundamental and long¬ 
standing practices of the Service, as well 
as potentially violating the constitutional 
protections afforded American citizens. 

Restraint extends beyond how Coast 
Guard personnel treat American citizens—it 
also covers how we treat the foreign citi¬ 
zens with whom we come into contact. Our 
sensitive handling of alien migrants during 
the mass exoduses from Cuba and Haiti 
illustrate how Coast Guard forces safeguard 
U.S. interests at sea while also upholding 
the dignity and contributing to the well¬ 
being of the migrants. As the cutting edge 
of U.S. maritime law enforcement, the 
Coast Guard must also exercise restraint 
when dealing with the illegal acts by foreign 
vessels and their crews. We have a duty to 
enforce U.S. sovereignty, but in a manner 
that does honor to the Constitution we took 
an oath to uphold. 

CONCLUSION 

Taken together, the characteristics 
and attributes discussed in Coast Guard 
Publication 1 define a remarkable institution 
of noble purpose and enduring worth to 
the American Republic. We have developed 
a unique culture and sense of ourselves 
that continues to define us daily. We are 
public servants and the accomplishment 
of our roles and missions benefits society. 
The Coast Guard is the recipient of public 
trust and we must remain worthy of that 
trust. We recognize that few other organiza¬ 
tions afford their members as much 
responsibility and authority at junior levels 
as does the Coast Guard. We are personally 
charged with stewardship of the authority 


57 


A 







Chapter Four 


and resources that have been delegated to 
us, regardless of our rank or rate. 

Whether we are members of a large 
unit, small station, or crew at sea, whether 
active duty, reservist, civilian, or auxiliary, 
we are one Coast Guard. The Coast Guard 
has many of the positive characteristics of 
a family-run firm. This permits personnel 
and units to be nimble and flexible, changing 
quickly with little effort. Our organization 
works on the basis of trust among people. 

In turn, their loyalty, responsibility, and 
professionalism inspire motivation to excel. 


As Coast Guard men and women we 
enthusiastically embrace the heritage of 
semper paratus and our continuing respon¬ 
sibility to uphold the values of Honor, 
Respect, and Devotion to Duty. We are heirs 
to this proud historical tradition. We under¬ 
stand that by their day-to-day attention to 
these values, our forebears developed and 
entrusted to us a venerable institution 
respected throughout the world for the 
work we perform as America’s Maritime 
Guardian. 




The high-endurance cutter Hamilton (WHEC 715) on patrol. 












APPENDICES 


APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY 

APPENDIX B: THE PRINCIPLES OF WAR 

APPENDIX C: THE PRINCIPLES OF MILITARY 

OPERATIONS OTHER THAN WAR 

APPENDIX D: FURTHER READING 





Appendix A 


GLOSSARY 


Admeasure 

To measure the various dimensions, capacities, and tonnage of a ship for 
official registration. 

Automated 
Mutualassistance 
Vessel Rescue 
(AMVER) System 

The Automated Mutual-assistance Vessel Rescue system is an international 
program run by the Coast Guard to provide resources to help any vessel in 
distress on the high seas. Participating merchant vessels provide sailing plans, 
periodic position reports, and a list of the vessels’ capabilities to the Coast 

Guard. The AMVER center then provides a surface picture to rescue centers 
that contains the position of participating ships in the vicinity of an emergency 
that can be used to assist a vessel in distress. 

Acceptable 

Presence 

Forward presence by U.S. forces that regional countries do not find threatening 
or objectionable. 

Aids to 

Navigation 

Equipment used to assist mariners in determining position and warn of 
dangers and obstructions by providing references such as audio, visual, or 
electronic signals. 

Armed Service 

An organized military force of a nation or group of nations. 

Battle Streamers 

Battle streamers are 2 3/4-inch wide by 4-foot long cloth ribbons that are 
attached to the ceremonial version of our Coast Guard colors. They represent 

Coast Guard heroic actions in naval engagements throughout the history of 
our Service. Our earliest battle streamer is for the Maritime Protection of the 

New Republic from 1 790-1 797. The Coast Guard started using battle streamers 
in 1 968. 

Capability 

The ability to execute a specified course of action. 

Command and 
Control 

The exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander 
over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission. 

Command and control functions are performed through an arrangement of 
personnel, equipment, communications, facilities, and procedures employed 
by a commander in planning, directing, coordinating, and controlling forces 
and operations in the accomplishment of the mission. 

Commander’s 

Intent 

The commander’s intent conveys the “end state” and the commander’s desired 
course of action. The concept of operations details the commander’s estimated 
sequence of actions to achieve this end state and contains essential elements 
of a plan—i.e., what is to be done and how the commander plans to do it. The 
commander’s intent reflects the individual’s vision and conveys the commander’s 
thinking through mission-type orders, in which subordinates are encouraged 
to exercise initiative and are given freedom to act independently. 

Culture 

The beliefs, customs, and institutions of an organization. 

Doctrine 

Fundamental principles by which military forces or elements thereof guide 
their actions in support of national objectives. It is authoritative but requires 

Judgment in application. 

Domestic 

Pertaining to one’s own or a particular country. 







Appendix A 


Exclusive 

Economic Zone 
(EEZ) 

The Exclusive Economic Zone is comprised of those waters seaward of a 
coastal state’s territorial sea and extending no further than 200 nautical miles 
from the baseline from which the territorial sea is drawn. In this zone, a 
coastal state may exercise jurisdiction and control over natural resources, 
both living and non-living. 

Effective Presence 

Having the right assets and capabilities at the right place at the right time. 

Force-in-Being 

Forces that are capitalized and in a sufficient state of readiness to respond as 
needed. As one of the nation’s five Armed Forces, the Coast Guard is a special¬ 
ized, capitalized, complementary, non-redundant force-in-being available to 
the National Command Authorities as a specialized instrument of national 
security. 

Function 

See Roles. 

High Seas 

The sea or ocean beyond the territorial waters and contiguous zone of a 
country. 

Humanitarian 

Having concern for or helping to improve the welfare of mankind. 

International 

Maritime 

Organization (IMO) 

The International Maritime Organization is a specialized agency of the United 

Nations that is responsible for improving maritime safety and preventing 
pollution from ships. 

Intermodal 

The relationship between different modes of transportation. An “intermodal 
connection” is a place where cargoes move from one mode of transportation 
to another, such as a container yard where shipping containers are transferred 
from ships to trucks or rail cars. 

International 

Between or among nations or concerned with the relations between nations. 

Joint 

Activities, operations, or organizations in which elements of more than one 
armed service of the same nation participate. 

Lightering 

The process of discharging or loading vessels anchored offshore. In the United 

States, the term generally is used to describe the process of offloading liquid 
cargo from a large tanker located in a designated “lightering zone” into smaller 
coastal tankers or barges. 

Mandate 

To authorize or decree a particular action, as by the enactment of a law. 

Maritime Defense 
Zone (MDZ) 

In 1984, the Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of the Navy signed a 
memorandum of agreement establishing Maritime Defense Zone Commands to 
coordinate the defense of the coastal United States. Coast Guard Atlantic Area 
and Pacific Area Commanders are responsible to their respective Navy Fleet 
Commanders-in-Chief for coastal defense planning and operations, as well as 
for validating the requirements for naval coastal warfare missions. Since 1994, 

MDZ has expanded to include foreign harbor defense, port security, and 
coastal sea control in littoral areas. The MDZ Commanders employ forces 
composed of active and reserve units of the Coast Guard and Navy. 


61 






Appendix A 


Memorandum of 
Agreement 

An agreement between two or more agencies concerning mutually supporting 
services and responsibilities. 

Missions 

1. The mandated services the Coast Guard performs in pursuit of its 
fundamental roles. Syn: Duties. The missions the Coast Guard performs 
in fulfilling its roles are: 

Search and Rescue; Marine Safety; Recreational Boating Safety; Port and 
Waterways Security; Maritime Law Enforcement—Drug Interdiction; 
Maritime Law Enforcement—Living Marine Resources; Maritime Law 
Enforcement—Alien Migrant Interdiction; Maritime Law Enforcement— 
General; Marine Environmental Protection; Aids to Navigation; Ice 
Operations; Bridge Administration; Vessel Traffic Management; National 
Defense; and International Ice Patrol. 

2. Tasks or operations assigned to an individual or unit. 

Marine 

Transportation 
System (MTS) 

The Marine Transportation System consists of waterways, ports, and their 
intermodal connections, vessels, vehicles, and system users. Each component 
is a complex system within itself and is closely linked with the other components. 

National Security 

National Security: 

1. A collective term encompassing both the national defense and foreign 
relations of the United States. Specifically, the condition provided by a 
military or defense advantage over any foreign nation or group of nations. 

2. A favorable foreign relations position. 

3. A defense posture capable of successfully resisting hostile or destructive 
action from within or without, overt or covert. 

Port State Control 
Program 

The Port State Gontrol program exists under congressional mandate to 
eliminate sub-standard vessels from U.S. waters. It came about as a result 
of an increased number of non-U.S. flag commercial and passenger vessels 
arriving and departing U.S. waters. The program requires boardings of foreign 
flag vessels prior to their entry to U.S. ports to ensure compliance with inter¬ 
national conventions such as SOLAS (Safety Of Life At Sea) and MARPOL 
(Prevention of Pollution from Ships) and provides for detention of vessels 
found not in compliance with requirements. 

Principles of 

Military Operations 
Other Than War 
(MOOTW) 

The principles of military operations other than war represent the best efforts 
of military thinkers to identify those aspects of the use of military capabilities 
across the range of military operations short of war that are universally true 
and relevant. Military operations other than war focus on deterring war, 
resolving conflict, and promoting peace, and may involve elements of both 
combat and non-combat operations in peacetime, conflict, and war. 

Principles of War 

The principles of war represent the best efforts of military thinkers to identify 
those aspects of warfare that are universally true and relevant. The principles 
of war generally focus on large-scale, sustained combat operations, during 
which the primary goal is to win as quickly and with as few casualties as 
possible. 







Appendix A 


Regulatory 

Roles 


Search and Rescue 
(SAR) 

Specialized Service 

Tactical Level 


Of or concerning a rule, law, order, or direction from a superior or competent 
authority regulating action or conduct. 

The enduring purposes for which the Coast Guard is established and 
organized. Syn: Functions. Our fundamental roles are: 

■ Maritime Security. Protect America’s maritime borders and suppress 
violations of federal law in the maritime region. 

■ Maritime Safety. Save lives and property at sea through prevention and 
response activities. 

■ Protection of Natural Resources. Protect the marine environment and 
the natural resources within it through prevention and response activities. 

■ Maritime Mobility. Provide essential services that undergird an effective, 
efficient, and safe marine transportation system. 

■ National Defense. Defend the nation as a full partner with the Navy and 
the other U.S. Armed Forces in support of America’s national security and 
military strategies and operations. 

Search and Rescue is the use of available resources to assist persons and 
property in potential or actual distress. The Coast Guard is the lead agency for 
Maritime SAR. The Commandant has divided the Maritime SAR Area into two 
sections, the Atlantic Maritime Area and the Pacific Maritime Area. The Atlantic 
Area Commander is the Atlantic Area SAR Coordinator, and the Pacific Area 
Commander is the Pacific Area SAR Coordinator. 

An armed service specialized for a certain type or class of duties. The Coast 
Guard operates as a specialized service when part of the Navy. 

The level at which the missions are actually executed. For example, a small 
boat responding to a search-and-rescue mission. 





Appendix B 


THE PRINCIPIES OF WAR 


As a member of the U.S. Armed Forces, the principles 
of war also apply to the Coast Guard, particularly 
when we engage in joint military operations with 
the Navy and the other armed services. Like the 
broader principles to which the Service adheres, 
these principles do not constitute a checklist that 
should be memorized. Rather, they provide a 
framework for thinking about the requirements 
of warfare and, when taken out of the context 
of combat, other types operations as well. 

The principles are as follows”: 

■ Objective. The purpose of the objective is to 
direct every military operation toward a clearly 
defined, decisive, and attainable objective. The 
objective of combat operations is the destruction 
of the enemy armed forces’ capability and will to 
fight. The objective of an operation other than war 
might be more difficult to define; nevertheless, 

it too must be clear from the beginning. Objective 
must directly, quickly, and economically contribute 
to the purpose of the operation. Each operation 
must contribute to strategic objectives. Avoid 
actions that do not directly contribute to achieving 
the objective. 

■ Mass. The purpose of mass is to concentrate 
the effects of combat power at the place and time 
to achieve decisive results. To achieve mass is to 
synchronize appropriate Joint force capabilities 
where they will have a decisive effect in a short 
period of time. Mass must be sustained to have 
the desired effect. Massing effects, rather than 
concentrating forces, can enable even numerically 
inferior forces to achieve decisive results and mini¬ 
mize human losses and waste of resources. 

■ Maneuver. The purpose of maneuver is to place 
the enemy in a position of disadvantage through 
the flexible application of combat power. Maneuver 
is the movement of forces in relation to the enemy 
to secure or retain positional advantage, usually in 
order to deliver—or threaten delivery of—the 
direct and indirect fires of the maneuvering force. 
Effective maneuver keeps the enemy off balance 
and thus protects the friendly force. It contributes 
materially in exploiting successes, preserving 
freedom of action, and reducing vulnerability by 
continually posing new problems for the enemy. 


■ Offensive. The purpose of an offensive action 
is to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative. 
Offensive action is the most effective and decisive 
way to attain a clearly defined objective. Offensive 
operations are the means by which a military force 
seizes and holds the initiative while maintaining 
freedom of action and achieving decisive results. 
The importance of offensive action is fundamentally 
true across all levels of war. 

■ Economy of Force. The purpose of the economy 
of force is to allocate minimum essential combat 
power to secondary efforts. Economy of force is 
the Judicious employment and distribution of 
forces. It is the measured allocation of available 
combat power to such tasks as limited attacks, 
defense, delays, or deception in order to achieve 
mass elsewhere at the decisive point and time. 

■ Unity of Command. The purpose of unity of 
command is to ensure unity of effort for every 
objective under one responsible commander for 
every objective. Unity of command means that all 
forces operate under a single commander with the 
requisite authority to direct all forces employed in 
pursuit of a common purpose. Unity of effort, 
however, requires coordination and cooperation 
among all forces toward a commonly recognized 
objective, although they are not necessarily part 
of the same command structure. In multi-national 
and interagency operations, unity of command 
may not be possible, but the requirement for unity 
of effort becomes paramount. Unity of effort— 
coordination through cooperation and common 
interests—is an essential complement to unity 

of command. 

■ Simplicity. The purpose of simplicity is to pre¬ 
pare clear, uncomplicated plans and concise orders 
to ensure thorough understanding. Simplicity con¬ 
tributes to successful operations. Simple plans and 
clear, concise orders minimize misunderstanding 
and confusion. When other factors are equal, the 
simplest plan is preferable. Simplicity in plans 
allows better understanding and execution planning 
at all echelons. Simplicity and clarity of expression 
greatly facilitate mission execution in the stress, 
fatigue, and other complexities of modern combat 
and are especially critical to success in combined 
operations. 









Appendix B 


■ Surprise. The purpose of surprise is to strike 
the enemy at a time or place in a manner for 
which it is unprepared. Surprise can help the com¬ 
mander shift the balance of combat power and 
thus achieve success well out of proportion to the 
effort expended. Factors contributing to surprise 
include speed in decision making, information 
sharing, and force movement; effective intelli¬ 
gence; deception; application of unexpected com¬ 
bat power; operations security; and variations in 
tactics and methods of operation. 

■ Security. The purpose of security is to never 
permit the enemy to acquire unexpected advan¬ 
tage. Security enhances freedom of action by 
reducing our vulnerability to hostile acts, influ¬ 
ence, or surprise. Security results from the meas¬ 
ures taken by commanders to protect their forces. 
Staff planning and an understanding of enemy 
strategy, tactics, and doctrine will enhance securi¬ 
ty. Risk is inherent in military operations. 
Application of this principle includes prudent risk 
management, not undue caution. Protecting the 
force increases our combat power and preserves 
freedom of action. 





Appendix C 


THE PRINCIPUS OF MIIITARY OPERHTIONS OTHER THAR WAR 


Military Operations Other Than War encompass a 
broad range of military operations and support a 
variety of purposes, including: supporting national 
objectives, deterring war, returning to a state of 
peace, promoting peace, keeping day-to-day ten¬ 
sions between nations below the threshold of 
armed conflict, maintaining U.S. influence in foreign 
lands, and supporting U.S. civil authorities consistent 
with applicable law. Support of these objectives is 
achieved by providing military forces and resources 
to accomplish a wide range of missions other than 
warfighting. The principles of war, though principally 
associated with large-scale combat operations, 
generally apply to MOOTW, though sometimes in 
different ways. Strikes and raids, for example, rely 
on the principles of surprise, offensive, economy 
of force, and mass to achieve a favorable outcome. 
However, political considerations and the nature 
of many MOOTW require an underpinning of addi¬ 
tional principles described below. MOOTW that 
require combat operations (such as some forms 
of peace enforcement, or strikes and raids) require 
joint force commanders OFC) to fully consider the 
principles of war and principles of MOOTW.” 

■ Objective. Direct every military operation 
toward a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable 
objective. 

■ JFCs must understand the strategic aims, 
set appropriate objectives, and ensure 
that these aims and objectives contribute 
to unity of effort. Inherent in the principle 
of objective is the need to understand 
what constitutes mission success, and 
what might cause the operation to be 
terminated before success is achieved. 
As an example, excessive U.S. casualties 
incurred during a peacekeeping operation 
may cause abandonment of the operation. 

■ Although defining mission success may 
be more difficult in MOOTW, it is impor¬ 
tant to do so to keep U.S. forces focused 
on a clear, attainable military objective. 
Specifying measures of success helps 
define mission accomplishment and 


cally address the desired military end 
state. JFCs should, therefore, translate 
their political guidance into appropriate 
military objectives through a rigorous 
and continuous mission and threat 
analysis. JFCs should carefully explain 
to political authorities the implications 
of political decisions on capabilities 
and risk to military forces. Care should 
be taken to avoid misunderstandings 
stemming from a lack of common 
terminology. 

■ Change to initial military objectives may 
occur because political and military lead¬ 
ers gain a better understanding of the 
situation, or it may occur because the 
situation itself changes. JFCs should be 
aware of shifts in the political objec¬ 
tives, or in the situation itself, that 
necessitate a change in the military 
objective. These changes may be very 
subtle, yet they still require adjustment 
of the military objectives. If this adjust¬ 
ment is not made, the military objectives 
may no longer support the political 
objectives, legitimacy may be undermined, 
and force security may be compromised. 

■ Unity of Effort. Seek unity of effort in every 
operation. 

■ This MOOTW principle is derived from 
the principle of war, unity of command. 

It emphasizes the need for ensuring all 
means are directed to a common pur¬ 
pose. However, in MOOTW, achieving 
unity of effort is often complicated by 

a variety of international, foreign, and 
domestic military and non-military par¬ 
ticipants, the lack of definitive command 
arrangements among them, and varying 
views of the objective. This requires that 
JFCs or other designated directors of the 
operation, rely heavily on consensus 
building to achieve unity of effort. 


phase transitions. ■ While the chain of command for U.S. 

military forces remains inviolate (flowing 
■ The political objectives that military from the National Command Authorities 

objectives are based on may not specifi- through the combatant commander to 






Appendix C 


the subordinate JFC), command arrange¬ 
ments among coalition partners may be 
less well-defined and not include full 
command authority. Under such circum¬ 
stances, commanders must establish 
procedures for liaison and coordination 
to achieve unity of effort. Because 
MOOTW will often be conducted at the 
small-unit level, it is important that all 
levels understand the informal and 
formal relationships. 

Security. Never permit hostile factions to 
acquire a military, political, or informational 
advantage. 

■ This principle enhances freedom of 
action by reducing vulnerability to 
hostile acts, influence, or surprise. 

■ The inherent right of self-defense 
against hostile acts or hostile intent 
applies in all operations. This protection 
may be exercised against virtually any 
person, element, or group hostile to the 
operation: for example, terrorists, or 
looters after a civil crisis or natural 
disaster. JFCs should avoid complacency 
and be ready to counter activity that 
could bring harm to units or jeopardize 
the operation. All personnel should stay 
alert even in a non-hostile operation 
with little or no perceived risk. Inherent 
in this responsibility is the need to plan 
for and posture the necessary capability 
to quickly transition to combat should 
circumstances change. 

■ In addition to the right of self-defense, 
operations security is an important 
component of this principle of MOOTW. 
Although there may be no clearly 
defined threat, the essential elements 
of U.S. military operations should still 
be safeguarded. The uncertain nature 
of the situation inherent in MOOTW, 
coupled with the potential for rapid 
change, require that operations security 
be an integral part of the operation. 
Operations security planners must 
consider the effect of media coverage 
and the possibility coverage may com¬ 
promise essential security or disclose 
critical information. 


■ Security may also involve the protection 
of civilians or participating agencies and 
organizations. The perceived neutrality 
of these protected elements may be a 
factor in their security. Protection of a 
nongovernmental organization (NCO) 

or private volunteer organization (PVO) 
by U.S. military forces may create the 
perception that the NCO or PVO is pro- 
U.S. Therefore, an NCO or PVO may be 
reluctant to accept the U.S. military’s 
protection. 

Restraint. Apply appropriate military capability 

prudently. 

■ A single act could cause significant 
military and political consequences; 
therefore, judicious use of force is 
necessary. Restraint requires the careful 
balancing of the need for security, the 
conduct of operations, and the political 
objective. Excessive force antagonizes 
those parties involved, thereby damaging 
the legitimacy of the organization that 
uses it while possibly enhancing the 
legitimacy of the opposing party. 

■ Commanders at all levels must take 
proactive steps to ensure their personnel 
know and understand the rules of 
engagement (ROE) and are quickly 
informed of changes. Failure to under¬ 
stand and comply with established ROE 
can result in fratricide, mission failure, 
and national embarrassment. ROE in 
MOOTW are generally more restrictive, 
detailed, and sensitive to political 
concerns than in war, consistent always 
with the right of self-defense. Restraint 
is best achieved when ROE issued 

at the beginning of an operation address 
most anticipated situations that may 
arise. ROE should be consistently 
reviewed and revised as necessary. 
Additionally, ROE should be carefully 
scrutinized to ensure the lives and 
health of military personnel involved in 
MOOTW are not needlessly endangered. 




67 






Perseverance. Prepare for the measured, 
protracted application of military capability in 
support of strategic aims. Some MOOTW may 
require years to achieve the desired results. The 
underlying causes of the crisis may be elusive, 
making it difficult to achieve decisive resolution. 
It is important to assess possible responses to 
a crisis in terms of each option’s impact on the 
achievement of the long-term political objective. 
This assessment does not preclude decisive mili¬ 
tary action, but frames that action within the 
larger context of strategic aims. Often, the patient, 
resolute, and persistent pursuit of national goals 
and objectives, for as long as necessary to achieve 
them, is a requirement for success. This will often 
involve political, diplomatic, economic, and 
informational measures to supplement military 
efforts. 

Legitimacy. Committed forces must sustain 
the legitimacy of the operation and of the host 
government, where applicable. 

■ In MOOTW, legitimacy is a condition 
based on the perception by a specific 
audience of the legality, morality, or 
rightness of a set of actions. This audience 
may be the U.S. public, foreign nations, 
the populations in the area of responsi¬ 
bility/joint operations area, or the partici¬ 
pating forces. If an operation is perceived 
as legitimate, there is a strong impulse 
to support the action. If an operation is 
not perceived as legitimate, the actions 
may not be supported and may be actively 
resisted. In MOOTW, legitimacy is fre¬ 
quently a decisive element. The prudent 
use of psychological operations and 
humanitarian and civic assistance programs 
assists in developing a sense of legitimacy 
for the supported government. 


■ Legitimacy may depend on adherence to 
objectives agreed to by the international 
community, ensuring the action is 
appropriate to the situation, and fairness 
in dealing with various factions. It may 
be reinforced by restraint in the use of 
force, the type of forces employed, and 
the disciplined conduct of the forces 
involved. The perception of legitimacy 
by the U.S. public is strengthened if 
there are obvious national or humanitarian 
interests at stake, and if there is assurance 
that American lives are not being need¬ 
lessly or carelessly risked. 

■ Another aspect of this principle is the 
legitimacy bestowed upon a government 
through the perception of the populace 
which it governs. Because the populace 
perceives that the government has 
genuine authority to govern and uses 
proper agencies for valid purposes, they 
consider that government as legitimate. 






Appendix D 


FURTHER READING 


Hamilton’s Vision and Circular of 4 June 

1 791 —No other service or agency of the federal 
government ever received clearer sailing directions 
than the Coast Guard did from its founder, Alexander 
Hamilton. It is known that Hamilton had a deep 
and abiding concern as to the conduct of the 
crews. This is evidenced by his superbly crafted 
4 June 1791 “Letter of Instruction.” As Captain- 
Commandant Horatio Davis Smith wrote in his 
early history of the U.S. Revenue Marine Service, 
“the Circular embodied the views of the Secretary 
concerning the Service he had created, the success 
of which was problematical, and over whose fortunes 
he watched with considerable solicitude. He was 
ever ready to listen to suggestions of officers 
tending to improve the Corps, and stood ready to 
aid the elevation and improvement of the Service 
by personal influence and the ready eloquence, of 
which he was such a complete master.” Hamilton’s 
Circular, available on the Internet at http://www. 
uscg.mil/hq/g-cp/history/ham iltonletter.htm I, 
should be thoroughly reviewed and studied by all 
Coast Guard personnel—officer, enlisted, civilian, 
and auxiliary. 

Headquarters Circular No. 126 of 16 October 
1936 —There is a tendency to believe that current 
statements are original expressions of purpose 
and expectation, but in truth they are not. America's 
Maritime Guardian is not the first authoritative 
statement of Coast Guard doctrine. In 1936, for 
example. Headquarters Circular No. 126 laid down 
doctrine that with minimum editing (largely to 
update our mission set) would be as applicable 
today as it was more than 60 years ago. Circular 
No. 126 is available on the Internet at http://www. 
uscg.mil/hq/gcp/history/HQCircularl 26.html. 

Strategic Planning Documents— Amer/ca’s 
Maritime Guardian describes what we do, why 
we do it, and who we are as an organization. 

It does not describe the challenges we face as 
a nation and Service, our vision for the future, 
our goals to reach that future, or when and how 
we plan to reach our goals. These subjects are 
addressed in the following strategic planning 
documents. 


• The White House. A National Security 
Strategy for a New Gentury. December 
1999. 

■ Joint Chiefs of Staff. Shape, Respond, 
Prepare Now: A Military Strategy for 
a New Era. 1 997. 

■ Department of Transportation. Strategic 
Plan (current edition). 

■ United States Coast Guard. Goast Guard 
2020. May 1 998. 

■ United States Coast Guard. United States 
Goast Guard Strategic Plan (current edi¬ 
tion). 

■ Office of Naval Intelligence and U.S. 
Coast Guard Intelligence Coordination 
Center. Threats and Ghallenges to 
Maritime Security. 1 March 1999. 

■ Mendel, William W. and Murl D. Monger. 
Strategic Planning and the Drug Threat. 
Carlisle, PA; Strategic Studies Institute, 
U.S. Army War College, August 1 997. 

■ Office of National Drug Control Policy. 
The National Drug Gontrol Strategy, 
1998: A Ten-Year Plan. Washington, DC: 
CPO, 1998. 

• Report of the Interagency Task Force 

on U.S. Coast Guard Roles and Missions. 
A Goast Guard for the Twenty-First 
Gentury. December 1 999. 

History — America’s Maritime Guardian provides 
a brief overview of the rich history of the Coast 
Guard and its predecessor organizations. A better 
knowledge of the history of the Coast Guard, as 
contained in the following recommendations, will 
enhance the reader’s understanding of our Service. 
The Coast Guard Historian’s Office also maintains 
a list of the best books on Coast Guard history in 
print on the Internet at http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g- 
cp/history/bestbooks.html. 





Beard, Barrett Thomas. Wonderful Flying 
Machines: A History of US. Coast Guard 
Helicopters. Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval 
Institute Press, 1 996. 

Browning, Robert M., Jr. “The Coast Guard 
Captains of the Port,” in Jan M. Copes 
and Timothy Runyon, ed.. To Die 
Gallantly: The Battle of the Atlantic. 

New York: Westview Press, 1994. 

Evans, Stephen H. The United States 
Coast Guard, 1790-1915: A Definitive 
History. Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval 
Institute Press, 1 949. 

Johnson, Robert Erwin. Guardians of the 
Sea: History of the United State Coast 
Guard, 1915 to the Present. Annapolis, 
MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1987. 

King, Irving H. George Washington’s 
Coast Guard: Origins of the U.S. Revenue 
Cutter Service, 1789-1801. Annapolis, 
MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1978. 

King, Irving H. The Coast Guard 
Expands, 1865-1915. Annapolis, 

MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1996. 

King, Irving H. The Coast Guard Under 
Sail: The U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, 
1789-1865. Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval 
Institute Press, 1 989. 

Junger, Sebastian. The Perfect Storm. 

New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. 

Larzelere, Alex. The Coast Guard at War. 
Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute 
Press, 1 997. 

Noble, Dennis L. Lifeboat Sailors: 
Disasters, Rescues, and the Perilous 
Future of the Coast Guard’s Small Boat 
Stations. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 
2000 . 

Noble, Dennis L. Lighthouses & Keepers: 
The U.S. Lighthouse Service and Its 
Legacy. Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval 
Institute Press, 1 997. 


■ Noble, Dennis L. That Others Might Live: 
The U.S. Life-Saving Service, 1878-1915. 
Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute 
Press, 1 994. 

• Noble, Dennis L. and Truman R. 
Strobridge. Alaska and the U.S. Revenue 
Cutter Service, 1867-1915. Annapolis, 
MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1999. 

■ U.S. Coast Guard. International Ice Patrol. 
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of 
Transportation, July 1984. 

■ Willoughby, Malcolm F. The U.S. Coast 
Guard in World War II. New York: Arno 
Printing, 1 980. 

Maritime Policy —The Coast Guard not only 
executes U.S. maritime policy, we also play a 
significant role in the development of that policy. 
The following are excellent books on maritime 
policy issues. 

■ Degenhardt, Henry W. Maritime Affairs: 

A World Handbook. New York: Longman 
Publishing Croup, 1985. 

■ Fuss, Charles M.,Jr. and W.T. Leland. 

Sea of Crass. Annapolis, MD: Naval 
Institute Press, 1 996. 

■ Caldorisi, George V. and Kevin R. Vienna. 
Beyond the Law of the Sea. Boulder, CO: 
Praeger, 1987. 

■ Cinifer, Jeremy and Michael Pugh, ed. 
Maritime Security and Peacekeeping: 

A Framework for United Nations 
Operations. Manchester, UK: Manchester 
University Press, 1994. 

■ Kearsley, Harold J. Maritime Power and 
the Twenty-first Century. Aldershot, UK: 
Dartmouth Publishing, 1992. 

■ Oakley, Robert B. Policing the New World 
Disorder: Peace Operations and Public 
Security. Washington, DC: National 
Defense University Press, 1998. 








■ Staly, Robert Stephens, II. The Wave of 
the Future: The United Nations and 
Naval Peacekeeping. New York: Lynne 
Riener Publishers, 1992. 

■ Till, Geoffrey, ed. Seapower: Theory and 
Practice. Essex, UK: Frank Cass, 1994. 

■ Wang, James C.F. Handbook on Ocean 
Politics and Law. New York: Greenwood 
Publishing Group, 1992. 

■ Williams, Michael C. Civil-Military 
Relations and Peace-keeping. Oxford, 

UK: Oxford University Press, 

International Institute for Strategic 
Studies, Adelphi Paper 321, August 
1998. 

Legal Authorities —The Coast Guard has been 
granted broad legal authority to act. The following 
publication outlines the numerous sources of that 
authority. 


Coast Guard Legal Authorities, 
COMDTPUB P5850.2B. 




Endnotes 


Endnotes 


1 Memorandum of Agreement between the 
Department of Defense and the Department 
of Transportation on the Use of U.S. Coast 
Guard Capabilities and Resources in Support 
of the National Military Strategy, 3 October 
1995. This document may be found on the 
Coast Guard Intranet site at http://cgweb. 
comdt.uscg.mil/g-opd/NAVGARD/nav- 
gardl .htm. 

2 Stephen H. Evans, The United States Coast 
Guard, 1790-1915: A Definitive History 
(Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1949), 
p. 5 [hereafter Evans, Definitive History of 
the Coast Guard]. 

3 Quoted in Robert Erwin Johnson, Guardians 
of the Sea (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute 
Press, 1987), p. 1. 

4 Evans, Definitive History of the Coast Guard, 
p. 13. 

5 Act of August 4, 1790 (1 Stat. L., 145, 175) 
(ten per cutter—a master, three mates, four 
mariners, and two boys). 

6 Dennis L. Noble, Lighthouses & Keepers: The 
U.S. Lighthouse Service and its Legacy 
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 
p. 7. There were at least eleven lighthouses 
in the colonies before the Revolution, but 
the first one is generally agreed to have 
been the Boston Light, located on Little 
Brewster Island, Boston Harbor, 
Massachusetts. Id., p. 5. 

7 Act of August 7, 1789 (1 Stat. L., 53). 

8 Evans, Definitive History of the Coast Guard, 
p. 4. 

9 Act of July 1, 1797 (1 Stat. L. 523, 525). 

10 Johnson, Guardians of the Sea, p. 2. 

11 Act of December 22, 1837 (5 Stat. L. 208). 

12 Act of July 7, 1838 (5 Stat. L. 304), quoted in 
Evans, Definitive History of the Coast Guard, 
p. 29. 

13 Evans, Definitive History of the Coast Guard, 
p. 29. 

14 Joshua M. Smith, ‘“So Ear Distant from the 
Eye of Authority’: The Embargo of 1807 and 
the U.S. Navy, 1807-1809,” in William B. 
Cogar (ed.). New Interpretations in Naval 
History: Selected Papers from the Twelfth 
Naval History Symposium (Annapolis, MD: 
Naval Institute Press, 1996), p. 132. 


15 Eor an excellent treatment of this subject, 
see Warren S. Howard, American Slavers and 
the Federal Law, 1837-1862 (Berkeley, CA: 
University of California Press, 1963). 

16 Quoted in The U.S. Coast Guard: A Historical 
Overview by the Office of the Coast Guard 
Historian. 

17 Evans, Definitive History of the Coast Guard, 
p. 76. 

18 President Lincoln invoked the provisions 
of section 98 of An Act to Regulate the 
Collection of Duties on Imports and Tonnage, 
2 March 1799, which stated that “revenue 
cutters shall, whenever the President of the 
United States shall so direct, co-operate with 
the navy of the United States, during which 
time, they shall be under the direction of 
the Secretary of the Navy....” 1 Stat. L. 626, 
pp. 699-700. 

19 Evans, Definitive History of the Coast Guard, 
p. 75, citing Army and Navy Journal, 26 
November 1864. This claim was verified by 
Captain (E) J. H. Pulsifer, USCG (Ret.) in the 
U.S.C.G. Association Journal, 1917, Vol. I, 

No. 1. 

20 Eor many decades the Service had no official 
title, although “Revenue Marine” or “Revenue 
Service” seem to have been the most com¬ 
mon appellations in the 1800s. Not until 
1863 did Congress actually call the Service 
by name. In that year. Congress used the 
name in An Act in Relation to Commissioned 
Officers of the United States Revenue Cutter 
Service, 4 Eebruary 1863, 12 Stat. L. 639. 

21 Irving H. King, The Coast Guard Expands, 
1865-1915: New Roles, New Frontiers 
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996), 
pp. 11-13. 

22 Id., p. 13. 

23 In 1872, the fleet consisted of 35 cutters, 
of which 25 were steamers. Id., p. 14. In 
1881, the numbers were 36 and 31, respec¬ 
tively. Id., p. 17. 

24 Joe A. Mobley, Ship Ashore! The U.S. Lifesavers 
of Coastal North Carolina (Raleigh, NC: North 
Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 
Division of Archives and History, 1994), pp. 
26-27. 

25 Eor a discussion of the Huron and Metropolis 
disasters and their effect, see Mobley, Ship 
Ashore!, pp. 53-90. 


,mji 






Endnotes 


26 This task was a precursor to those associated 
with Maritime Defense Zones during the late 
twentieth century. 

27 Evans, Definitive History of the Coast Guard, 
pp. 169-72. In his letter to Congress, the 
President wrote: 

On the 11th of May, 1898, there occurred 
a conflict in the Bay of Cardenas, Cuba, 
in which the naval torpedo boat Winslow 
was disabled, her commander wounded, 
and one of her officers and a part of her 
crew killed by the enemy’s fire. 

In the face of a most galling fire from the 
enemy’s guns the revenue cutter Hudson, 
commanded by First Lieutenant Frank H. 
Newcombe, lUSRCS], rescued the disabled 
Winslow, her wounded commander, and 
remaining crew. The commander of the 
Hudson kept his vessel in the very hottest 
fire of the action ... until he finally [was 
able to tow] that vessel out of range 
of the enemy’s guns, a deed of special 
gallantry. Id., pp. 171-2. 

28 Johnson, Guardians of the Sea, p. 20. 

29 King, The Coast Guard Expands, p. 232. 

30 Coast Guard aviation traces its beginnings 
to 1915, when Lieutenants Elmer F. Stone 
and Norman B. Hall of the cutter Onondaga 
persuaded Captain Benjamin M. Chiswell to 
allow them to fly search missions for the 
cutter in a borrowed aircraft. Their success 
led Congress to authorize a fledgling avia¬ 
tion program, but Congress failed to follow 
up with appropriations. The program lay 
dormant until after World War I, when the 
Coast Guard established an air station in 
Morehead City, North Carolina, using an 
abandoned naval air station and borrowed 
Navy flying boats. Again, the failure of 
appropriations doomed the program, and 
the air station closed in 1922. Johnson, 
Guardians of the Sea, pp. 42, 67. 

31 P.L. 755, June 22, 1936, 49 Stat. 1820. The 
law did not apply on the inland waters of 
the United States, except the Great Lakes 
and their connecting waters. 


32 During World War II, even the reserves 
required augmentation in order to meet port 
security needs. In June 1942, the Coast 
Guard established a Temporary Reserve 
made up of men and women who were 
excluded from full-time military service. By 
1944, 50,000 served, primarily as a part-time 
Volunteer Port-Security Force. Robert M. 
Browning, Jr., Captains of the Port 
(Washington, DC: Coast Guard Historian’s 
Office, 1993), pp. 15-16. 

33 W., p. 177. 

34 Id., pp. 195-196. 

35 Id., pp. 220-22. The acronym LORAN, adopted 
to conceal the project from our enemies, 
was a shortened version of “Long Range 
Navigation.” Id., p. 221. 

36 Alex Larzelere, The Coast Guard at War: 
Vietnam 1965-1975 (Annapolis, MD: Naval 
Institute Press, 1997), p. 7. 

37 Id., p. 121. 

38 Originally known as the “Atlantic Merchant 
Vessel Emergency Reporting System,” AMVER 
became operational on 18 July 1958. A his¬ 
tory of AMVER may be found on the Coast 
Guard Internet site at http://www.uscg.mil/ 
hq/g-o/g opr/amver/history.htm. 

39 Johnson, Guardians of the Sea, p. 341. 

40 The Timber Reserve Act of 1822, 3 Stat. L. 
651 (23 February 1822) authorized the 
President to “employ so much of the land 
and naval forces of the United States” as 
necessary to preserve public stands of live 
oak, used to build the stout hulls of U.S. 
men-o’-war, located in Florida. According 
to Evans, the Revenue Marine enforced this 
law. Evans, Definitive History of the Coast 
Guard, p. 29. 

41 Act of March 3, 1899, ch. 425, § 13, 30 Stat. 
1152, codified at 33 U.S. Code § 407. 

42 The three forward-deployed fleets are the 
Fifth Fleet in the Arabian Gulf/Middle East, 
the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, and the 
Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific. 





Endnotes 


43 Interagency Task Force Report on Coast 
Guard Roles and Missions, A Coast Guard for 
the Twenty First Century, 3 December 1999, 
p. ix. 

44 This document can be found on the Coast 
Guard Intranet site at http://cgweb.comdt. 
uscg.mil/gopd/NAVGARD/navgard 1 .htm. 

45 10 U.S. Code § 5062. 

46 The prohibition is statutory for the Army 
and Air Force (Act of June 18, 1878, ch. 263, 
§ 15, 20 Stat. L. 145, 152; codified at 18 U.S. 
Code § 1385); it is a matter of policy for the 
Navy and Marine Corps. 

47 14 U.S. Code § 2. 

48 Annual Report of the United States Coast 
Guard for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 
1915, Government Printing Office, 
Washington, DC, 1915, Treasury Department 
Document No. 2746, Coast Guard, p. 45. 

49 Alexander Hamilton, Letter of Instruction, 

4 June 1791, 1 3; available on the Internet at 
http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-cp/history/hamil- 
tonletter.html. 

50 Irving H. King, The Coast Guard Expands, 
1865-1915 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute 
Press, 1996), pp. 8, 198. 

51 Hamilton, Letter of Instruction, ^ 14. 

52 Joint Publication 3-0, Doctrine Lor Joint 
Operations (Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs 
of Staff, 1995), pp. A1-A3. 

53 Joint Publication 3-07, Joint Doctrine Lor 
Military Operations Other Than War 
(Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

1995). 


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